
Book .Al„. ■ 

CopightN" )3o4 

COPYRrCHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 

CONDUCT OF LIFE 



BY 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

ANDREW J. GEORGE, M.A. 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS. 

Two Copies Received 

iUl 9 1903 

^ Copydgnt Entry 
CLASS' d XXc. No, 

L 3) L / 

COPY B. 






Copyright, 1903, 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

I. Fate 3 

II. Power 43 

' III. Wealth 69 

IV. Culture 105 

V. Behavior 135 

VI. Worship 161 

VII. Considerations by the Way . . . 195 

VIII. Beauty 225 

IX. Illusions . 247 



INTRODUCTION. 

" The gods talk in the breath of the woods, 

They talk in the shaken pine, 
And fill the long reach of the old seashore 

With dialogue divine. 
And the poet who overhears 

Some random word they say, 
Is the fated man of men 

Whom the ages must obey." 

Time, the final arbiter in all contests for lasting 
distinction, subjects every candidate for immortality 
in the sphere of literature and life to a searching test. 
On the centenary of the birth of each it asks, " How 
have you increased man's capacity for truth and pure 
delight, for nobler loves and nobler cares .^" and again 
at the hundredth anniversary of his death the same 
interrogation is made in another form : "What aid 
have you for mankind as it faces the great unseen 
mysteries ; can you help life onward in its noblest 
aim?" Not many present themselves for these tests, 
but when a candidate comes forward and listens to 
the great question, his modest answer is, "I am 
powerless to speak in my own behalf ; I call upon 
humanity itself to testify : if it be silent, I have no 
claim to distinction." In the present year this plea 
will be entered by one in whom the world has an 



Vi INTR OD UC TION. 

interest. On May 25th will be fittingly observed the 
centennial of the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and 
the witnesses whom he summons in his behalf will be 
heard. Boston, Concord, Cambridge, and Lexington 
will naturally lead in this great assize. By laying 
the corner-stone of Emerson Hall, to be dedicated to 
extended philosophical research, fair Harvard will bear 
significant testimony to the claims of her noble son. 
Every detail of that eventful life will be dwelt upon 
by poet and preacher, essayist and orator, in order to 
reveal how it was that this simple, sweet, and sensitive 
child grew into the gracious, wise, and winning teacher 
of the truth and beauty of man, of nature, and of 
human life. The event cannot fail to add richly to 
the ever growing literature associated with the name 
of this apostle of sweetness and light. Let us be on 
our guard, however, lest we be tempted — as we have 
been by the like history of other great names in our 
literature — to neglect the original voice for these in- 
teresting interpretations. Better be ignorant of them 
all than to give one moment less to the reading of 
those pages which while they glow with a serene and 
mellow light are animate with health and strength of 
a courageous and stalwart defender of the faith, that 

" One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost." 

Emerson's life falls naturally into three periods. 
The first, or formative, period was uneventful save 
as it related to that which followed. With the per- 
spective which time has given us, we can readily 



INTR OD UCTION. vii 

perceive that the forces which were elemental in this 
period — forces which gave "the moral and material 
bias" — came from ancient and honorable English 
stock which for generations had maintained an 
unbroken line of academic teachers and preachers. 
Emerson's poetic name, Waldo, — if not his poetic 
nature, — came from the Waldensian valleys, whose 
slaughtered saints Milton called upon Heaven to 
avenge. The training which he received in the 
home, the school, and the university was such as to 
stimulate the best that was in him ; what he calls his 
elective affinities became evident at every stage. He 
breathed the keen and wholesome air of poverty ; a 
love of the beautiful and the true was fostered by asso- 
ciation with lofty ideals of manhood and womanhood 
in his home, and this became the noblest affinity dur- 
ing his school and college days both in his work and 
play. Energy and gentleness combined to give that 
charm of personal atmosphere which filled his life 
and work with the eager and childlike spirit of enthu- 
siasm. Early he learned what later became one of his 
apothegms, — " Nothing great was ever achieved with- 
out enthusiasm." Like Milton, he was a poet before 
he was twelve. He was a dreamer in the midst of a 
too busy world. He everywhere pays tribute to the 
unconscious in education. He says, ''The regular 
courses of studies have not yielded me better facts 
than some idle books under the bench at the Latin 
school." At Harvard, while working as president's 
freshman and waiter at Commons, Plutarch and Plato, 
Chaucer and Montaigne consoled him for his lack of 
success in mathematics ; and a stroll to Mount Auburn 



Viii ' INTRODUCTION, 

in study hours revealed a nature rebellious to the me- 
chanical elements of education. He won prizes for 
declamation, for essays on the " Character of Socrates," 
and " The Present State of Ethical Philosophy," and 
was elected class poet. The fundamental note in all 
these exercises was, " Insist on yourself; never imi- 
tate." When he came to teach he had little respect 
for conventional Decency and Custom starving Truth, 
and turned every recitation into a symposium alive 
with the play of individuality. He evidently had httle 
encouragement in this from the authorities, for he soon 
gave up teaching and turned to the profession which 
so many of his ancestors had adorned. He became 
pastor of the Second Church in Boston. He was so 
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Channing's lofty 
and catholic ideals that the materiahsm of creed and 
observance became an impediment to his highest 
religious aspirations, and he was compelled to resign 
his office. He had but recently married Miss Ellen 
Louise Tucker, a woman of remarkable grace, beauty, 
and buoyancy of spirit ; but here, too, where he had 
anticipated so much, he was doomed to disappoint- 
ment, for in February, 1831, she was called from him. 
In this double disappointment he sought relief in new 
scenes and associations, by a visit to Europe ; and 
here his second period of life and work began. 

When the history of English thought in the nine- 
teenth century shall be written, as has that of the 
eighteenth by Sir Leslie Stephen, we shall have 
revealed the natural relation of our great American 
writers and teachers of the early and middle period 
of the century to their antecedents in England. In 



INTR OD UCTION. IX 

the study of Emerson we have had clearly impressed 
upon us the essential facts in that interesting rela- 
tionship to Carlyle, but we shall not have the whole 
truth of the cause and result of his first visit to Eng- 
land until we study the other great forces which com- 
bined to lure him forth in those eventful days : forces 
which came into English life and letters through 
Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Chartreuse of the 
Quantocks and the English Lakes dedicated to the 
genius of solitude. We have already alluded to 
the influence on Emerson of that noble-hearted and 
spiritually minded leader of men, Dr. Channing; 
and no reader of his eloquent and v/ise works can 
fail to recognize how much he owed to the teaching 
of these great Englishmen : they are full of the lofty, 
spiritual passion of Wordsworth, of the rich and rare 
philosophical insight of Coleridge ; they reveal the wis- 
dom of love, and the love of wisdom. Knowing all 
this, as Emerson did, he had listened with special in- 
terest to Channing's noble address on National Litera- 
ture, which contained the following ideal : " Literature 
is to become more and more the instrument of swaying 
men, of doing good, of achieving fame. . . . We 
hope for our country the happiness and glory of a 
pure, deep, rich, beautiful, and ennobling literature." 
That the desire to see and hear these creators of a 
national and universal English literature fired Emer- 
son^s soul, we know from his sea notes written on 
the voyage over, in that " solstice of his health and 
spirits." Almost the first sentiment recorded is that 
Wordsworthian note which he later elaborated in his 
first great essay, "Nature": "Rose at sunrise and 



X INTRODUCTION. 

under the lee of the Spencer^ had a solitary and 
thoughtful hour. ^The clouds were touched, and 
in their silent faces might be read unutterable love.' " 
The slight modification of the line from "The Excur- 
sion" is interesting. It may have been due to the 
fact that he was quoting from memory, or it may re- 
veal a conscious purpose. It is quite natural, there- 
fore, to find him acknowledging in his letters, and 
later in " English Traits," that his main purpose in 
visiting England was to see three men, Coleridge, 
Wordsworth, and Carlyle. On setting out for home 
September i, 1833, he writes: "God has shown me 
the men I wished to see, Coleridge, Carlyle, Words- 
worth. He has thereby comforted and confirmed me 
in my convictions. Many things I owe to the sight of 
these men. I shall judge more justly, less timidly, of 
wise men, forevermore. . . . The comfort of meeting 
men of genius such as these is that they talk sincerely." 
Of the three European movements which Coleridge, 
Wordsworth, and Carlyle represented — the Revolu- 
tionary, the Scientific, and the Transcendental — it 
was the last which influenced Emerson, for it was 
the idealist's conception of God, Man, and Nature 
as presenting a unity to the intellect, the imagination, 
and the will. Here is Coleridge's transcendental 
theory of the genesis of consciousness and thought 
throughout the universe : — 

" And what if all of animated nature 
Be but organic harps diversely framed, 
That tremble with thought, as o'er them sweep, 
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, 
At once the Soul of each and God of all ? " 



INTRODUCTION. xi 

Wordsworth's impulse to the transcendental con- 
ception, as revealed to the imagination and impas- 
sioned contemplation, is seen in what follows : — 

" And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
A motive and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

Carlyle's impulse in the direction called transcen- 
dental was directed to the will, as is revealed in the 
" Sartor Resartus " : — 

" ' Temptations in the Wilderness ! ' exclaims Teu- 
felsdrockh : < Have we not all to be tried with such ? 
Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, 
be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with 
Necessity ; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other 
than Freedom, than Voluntary Force : thus have we 
a warfare ; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought 
battle. For the God-given mandate. Work thou in 
Welldoings lies mysteriously written, in Promethean 
Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us 
no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed ; 
till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gos- 
pel of Freedom.' " 

All these types of impulse as revealed in Cole- 
ridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle, respectively, moved 
Emerson profoundly and colored his thought, feeling, 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

and action, as is seen in the verse and prose through 
which he manifested himself to the world immediately 
on his return from this first visit abroad. With health 
restored, and stimulated by new ideals, he began that 
career of writer and lecturer which he continued for 
more than a generation. After a few preliminary 
manifestoes of the war he was about to wage against 
materialism, he settled down for reading and reflec- 
tion at the " Old Manse " in Concord with Dr. Ripley. 
He said, " I am a poet by nature, and therefore must 
live in the country." How widely he read may be 
seen only partially by the three thousand quotations 
which Dr. Holmes collected from his writings. I say 
partially, for his originality consisted in being himself 
and not reminding one of another; and it is to the 
careful reader of his work rather than to the devotee 
of the inner school that his wealth of gathering is 
revealed. It was the rare power of fusing the thought 
of the poet into the elements of his own soul that con- 
stituted him a voice rather than an echo. It is not 
without significance, I think, that so much of his pre- 
liminary work as a lecturer was on subjects relating to 
English literature ; especially significant was this pas- 
sage from the last in a series of ten : — 

" There remain at least two English authors now 
alive (Wordsworth and Coleridge) — and may they 
live long ! — who deserve particular attention as men 
of genius who obey their genius. In general it must 
be felt that a torpidity has crept over the greater fac- 
ulties, a disposition to put forms for things, the plaus- 
ible for the good, the appearance for the reality. A 
degree of humihation must be felt by the American 



INTRODUCTION. xiii 

scholar when he reviews the great names of those 
who in England, from Chaucer down, have enlarged 
the limits of wisdom, and then reckons how little this 
country, which has enjoyed the culture of science in 
the freedom of the wild, has added to the stock." 

The hnk between Channing's " National Literature " 
and Emerson's address, " The American Scholar," of 
a later date is here evident. 

In September, 1835, he married Lydia Jackson of 
Plymouth, and at once made the spot ever to be 
associated with his name, his home of plain living 
and high thinking. Now he more often sought the 
medium of verse for his revelations, and on April 19, 
1836, he gave us that hymn which, although it lacks 
movement, expresses the noblest political and moral 
spirit, and has become immortal in virtue of the 
range of a single quotation : — 

" Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 

While at work upon the preface to Carlyle's 
" Sartor Resartus," his own gospel of idealism 
was taking shape; for in September he published 
" Nature." This work Mr. Richard Garnett calls 
" the most intense and quintessential of his writings, 
and the first in which he came forward teaching as 
one having authority." In its intellectual range, its 
spiritual vision, and its appeal to the elements of 
action, it unites the work of Coleridge, Wordsworth, 
and Carlyle respectively in a form distinctly indi- 
vidual and incommunicable. "It is full of the har- 



xi V INTR OD UC TION. 

monies that are in the soul and in matter, and 
especially of the correspondence of these and those." 
How revolutionary it was is revealed by Dr. Holmes, 
who said of it : " Emerson was an iconoclast with- 
out a hammer, who took down our idols from their 
pedestals so tenderly that it seemed like an act of 
worship." There were many for whom this new 
wine was too heady, and they cast it aside with 
horror ; others tried to preserve it in old bottles of 
formalism which could not stand the pressure ; while 
a few allowed it to be used as it was intended to be. 
Through the master vision of this little tract the 
reader of Emerson should approach his teaching. 

Much of his verse of this time is tinged with sad- 
ness at the death of his brothers, Edward and Charles, 

" Strong, star-bright companions." 

In the winter of 1836 he gave a course of twelve lec- 
tures on the Philosophy of History — a study of the 
method of God's working through the various activities 
of man, political, literary, social. The thought is but 
a natural sequence to that set forth in " Nature." 
Dr. Martineau's " God in Nature and God in History," 
written for Old and New ^ in 1872, should be read by 
every one interested in Emerson's influence. Gradu- 
ally Emerson's ideas came to be viewed in their 
entirety, and by the most discerning were welcomed, 
as is seen by the history of his next great address, 
" Man Thinking, or the American Scholar," before 
the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, in August, 
1837. In it was sounded the clear and emphatic note 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

of intellectual independence, which did not mean 
ignorance of Europe and her art, but reliance upon our 
own instincts and inspirations to use for our new 
experiences and our new problems all the wealth of 
the past. As an illustration of this, read what he 
says in '- Quotation and OriginaUty " : " We expect a 
great man to be a good reader ; or in proportion to 
the spontaneous power should be the assimilating 
power. ... If an author give us just distinctions, 
inspiring lessons, or imaginative poetry, it is not so 
important to us whose they are. . . . The worth of 
the sentence consists in radiancy and equal aptitude 
to all intelligence." "Man Thinking" was a noble 
plea for originality as against servile imitation. He 
said : "It becomes the scholar to feel all confidence 
in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. Let 
him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, 
though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm 
it to be the crack of doom. ... A great soul will 
be strong to live as v/ell as strong to think." 

Lowell says of the occasion : " It was an event 
without any former parallel in our literary annals, a 
scene to be always treasured in the memory for its 
picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded 
and breathless aisles, what windows clustering with 
eager heads, what enthusiasm of approval, what grim 
silence of foregone dissent ! " 

The third great utterance of Emerson, upon which 
the entire structure of his thought and imagination 
was to be built, was that of the address to the graduat- 
ing class in the Harvard Divinity School, July 15, 1838. 
This to many seemed a denial of what had been 



XVI INTR OD UC TION. 

considered fundamental in religion, but when rightly 
understood it was rather a call to the behever to de- 
pend less upon externals and rest more upon the 
realities revealed to the soul. The remedy for ser- 
vility here as in " The American Scholar" was, " first, 
soul ; and second, soul ; and evermore, soul." With 
this foundation laid he proceeds calmly and with a 
sweet reasonableness to erect the superstructure. 

Mr. Richard Garnett writing of Emerson in 1896 
said, " In these three great discourses America may 
boast of possessing works of the first class which could 
have been produced in no other country, and which 
will remain permanent landmarks in intellectual 
history." 

His time was now spent in editing the Dial, in 
writing verse, and in lecturing. He became a familiar 
figure in nearly every town in the country, and his 
influence was the most pervasive and invigorating of 
any man of his time, or since. Perhaps the most 
significant impression which his personality revealed 
was that home-bred sense ripening into perfect inno- 
cence, gentleness, manliness, and the calm of true 
majesty. 

When Dean Stanley was in America he told Dr. 
Eliot that he had heard thirty or forty preachers of 
different communions during his six weeks' visit, and 
that in every case the sermon was by Mr. Emerson. 
Between 1840 and 1850 he gave to the world his 
first two volumes of essays and a volume of poems ; 
visited England a second time, delivered there many 
courses of lectures, and found everywhere enthusiastic 
and admiring audiences. He became a welcome guest 



INTR OD UCTION. XVll 

in the homes of culture and refinement ; audiences 
had been created for him ; as Mr. George Cooke says, 
" He entered into the labors of Coleridge and Words- 
worth." Henry Crabb Robinson likened Emerson's 
lectures to " those rhapsodical exercises of Coleridge, 
in his Table Talk." Arnold's sonnet "Written in 
Emerson's Essays " reveals the best English senti- 
ment toward his work : — 

" O monstrous, dead, unprofitable world, 
That thou canst hear, and hearing, hold thy way ! 
A voice oracular hath peal'd to-day. 
To-day a hero's banner is unfurl' d." 

Soon after his return he gathered from these 
EngUsh lectures the volume ''' Representative Men," 
and gave us his impressions of the English people 
in lectures afterwards collected (1856) as "English 
Traits." The latter still remains, with Irving's " Sketch 
Book," and Hawthorne's " Our Old Home," the most 
intelligent and sympathetic treatment of the great 
subjects in which every American should be inter- 
ested. Through these two volumes we may follow 
the transition to the third period of his work which 
began with that volume entitled " Conduct of Life," 
pubhshed in i860, being six lectures which were first 
given at Pittsburgh, Pa., in 185 1, and repeated in 
Boston and elsewhere. While he was writing the 
chapter on " Fate " of this volume, he complained to 
Carlyle of failing productiveness, " I scribble always 
a little — much less than formerly." It is interesting 
to note that this volume appeared at the period when 
the fibre of the nation was being tried by the great 



XVlll INTRODUCTION. 

issues of the Civil War. Here we find the supreme 
test of the wisdom and strength of this serene thinker. 
He became an interpreter of the 'finger pointings' 
of the gods and taught others to heed the monition. 
Through the quickening of the national conscience in 
this fiery ordeal, there was opened up a much wider 
avenue for the activity of the great idealist, and how 
boldly and resolutely he pursued his work here is 
evident to those who read " Conduct of Life " and the 
volumes which followed it, " Society and Sohtude," 
and " Letters and Social Aims." 

Emerson's conduct toward the great crisis in our 
history may be revealed best through his words relat- 
ing to the three stages of that crisis : the career of 
John Brown, the Emancipation Proclamation, and 
the death of Lincoln. He had welcomed Brown to 
Concord, and was moved by his heroism at Harper's 
Ferry. At a meeting in Tremont Temple, to raise 
funds for the support of his family, he said:. "He 
joins that perfect Puritan faith, which brought his 
fifth ancestor to Plymouth Rock, with his grandfather's 
ardor in the Revolution. He believes in two articles, 
— two instruments, shall I say? — the Golden Rule 
and the Declaration of Independence. It is easy to 
see what a favorite he will be with history, which 
plays such pranks with temporary reputations. . . . 
It is the red7ictio ad absiu'dtoii of slavery when a 
governor of Virginia is forced to hang a man whom 
he declares to be a man of the most integrity, truthful- 
ness, and courage he has ever met. Is that the kind 
of man the gallows was built for ? " 

Of the Emancipation Proclamation he said : " Every 



INTR OD UC TION. xix 

step in the history of poHtical liberty is a sally of the 
human mind into the untried future, and has the in- 
terest of genius, and is fruitful in heroic anecdotes. 
. . . The extreme moderation with which the Presi- 
dent advanced to his design ; his long-avowed, expec- 
tant policy, as if he chose to be strictly the executive 
of the best public sentiment of the country, waiting 
only till it should be unmistakably pronounced ; so 
fair a mind that none ever listened so patiently to such 
extreme varieties of opinion ; so reticent that his de- 
cision had taken all parties by surprise, whilst yet it is 
the just sequel of his prior acts ; the firm tone in which 
he announces it, without inflation or surplusage, — all 
these have bespoken such favor to the act, that, great 
as the popularity of the President has been, we are 
beginning to think that we have underestimated the 
capacity and virtue which the Divine Providence has 
made an instrument of benefit so vast. He has been 
permitted to do more for America than any other 
American man." 

The following majestic strains are from the poem 
he recited in Faneuil Hall when the Emancipation 
Proclamation was read: — 

" The word of the Lord by night 
To the watching Pilgrims came, 
As they sat by the seaside, 

And filled their hearts with flame. 

" I break your bonds and masterships 
And I unchain the slave ; 
Free be his heart and hand henceforth 
As wind and wandering wave." 



XX INTR OD UCTION. 

On the death of Lincoln he said : " The President 
stood before us as a man of the people. He was 
thoroughly American, had never crossed the sea, had 
never been spoiled by English insularity, or French 
dissipation ; a quite native aboriginal man, as an acorn 
from the oak ; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous ac- 
complishments. ... A plain man of the people, an 
extraordinary fortune attended him. . . . And what 
if it should turn out, in the unfolding of the web, that 
he had reached the term; that this heroic deliverer 
could not longer serve us ; that the rebellion had 
touched its natural conclusion, and what remained to 
be done required new and uncommitted hands, — a 
new spirit born out of the ashes of war ; and that 
Heaven, wishing to show the world a completed bene- 
factor, shall make him serve his country even more 
by his death than by his life ? Nations, like kings, 
are not good by facility and complaisance. . . . 
The serene providence which rules the fate of nations 
makes its own instruments, creates the man for the 
time, trains him in poverty, inspires his genius, and 
arms him for his task. It has given every race its one 
talent, and ordains that only that race which combines 
perfectly with the virtues of all, shall endure." 

The spirit of the mighty deeds wrought by those 
who wielded the sword may be best interpreted by 
the light of the truths these volumes contain ; for by 
them the public recognition of his leadership became 
universal. Never in our history has the true function 
of the scholar been so forcefully revealed as by this 
gentle leader in the great struggle for national preser- 
vation and reconstruction. His note was: — 



INTR OD UCTION, xxi 

" What do we gather hence but firmer faith 
That every gift of noble origin 
Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath ; 
That virtue and the faculties within 
Are vital — and that riches are akin 
To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death ? " 

It was fortunate for him and for us that, while in 
the second period he circled the summit of the tran- 
scendental mount of vision "where meteors shoot, 
clouds form, lightnings are loosed ; " in the third, he 
delighted in the activity of the common crofts safe in 
the bosom of the plain, where most of the world's 
work has to be done, the soHd ground of homely 
sense and practical wisdom. These volumes, while 
less rapturous and inevitable in spirit, less poetical 
and fascinating in form, are more far-reaching in their 
influence than the others, because they view life from 
our own intellectual position ; they are individual and 
embody a distinctly American type of thought and 
feeling. 

Mr. John Morley says: "Emerson was for basing 
the health of a modern commonwealth on the only 
real strength, and the only kind of force that can be 
relied upon, namely, the honest manly, simple, and 
emancipated character of the citizen. This gives to 
his doctrine a hold and a prize on the work of the 
day and makes him our helper. ... He never thinks 
it beneath his dignity to touch a point of minor morals, 
or to say a word for what he somewhere calls subter- 
ranean prudence. He values mundane circumspection 
as highly as Franklin, and gives to manners and rules 
of daily behavior an importance that might have satis- 



XXll INTR OD UCTION. 

fied Chesterfield. ... It is only great idealists, like 
Emerson, who take care not to miss the real."" Hence 
it is that Emerson, while he is always and every- 
where distinctly American, is acknowledged to be the 
most universal of our great writers, the one whose ele- 
mental work is least likely to yield to the ravages of 
time. His mission is "to heal and cleanse, not madden 
and pollute " ; the depth rather than the tumult of our 
life is reflected in his work. Like all great writers, he 
is becoming more modern as time goes on. His voice 
is reaching beyond the limits of our English speech. 
Of his " Conduct of Life," recently translated into Ger- 
man, a literary journal of Germany says : " It reads 
like a thoroughly modern book. Its observations have 
the effect of being made expressly for our present time. 
It is a gospel of life, filled with a liberalizing force. 
It is a revelation of deep spiritual illumination." 

By 1870 Emerson's creative work was done, and 
after a much-needed rest in Europe he lived in the 
home-bred pleasures and gentle scenes of his beloved 
Concord. His gracious presence was the delight of 
his townsfolk, and occasionally made gatherings in 
Boston and elsewhere distinguished. He knew that 
his work was done, but he never grew old ; for in his 
childhke simplicity he still lived in the future. His 
own poem " The World Soul," of which he was so 
fond, reveals his spirit to the last : — 



Spring still makes Spring in the mind 
When sixty years are told ; 

Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, 
And we are never old. 



INTR OD UCTION. XXUl 

Over the winter glaciers 
I see the summer glow, 
. And through the wild-piled snow-drift 
The warm rosebuds below." 

Questions of his limitations, his exaggerations, his 
vogue, his defects in verse and prose, need not detain 
us here ; the best reply to those who present these 
questions is the fact that he is still being read by 
those who can discriminate between a great book 
and a little one. Dr. Hale has recently told us that 
he has it on good authority that more than five 
million of his volumes have been printed in America. 
What a splendid impulse these volumes have con- 
tributed to the spirit of learning ! 

He says in them all : " I delight in telling what I 
think, but if you ask me how I dare to say so, I am 
the most helpless of mortals. What I have seen 
teaches me to trust the Creator for what 1 have not 
seen." Though Coleridge and Emerson are in so 
many respects unlike, yet when each is on the heights 
the same note is sounded : — 

" Ere on my bed my limbs I lay, 
It hath not been my use to pray 
With moving lips or bended knees ; 
But silently, by slow degrees, 
My spirit I to Love compose, 
In humble trust mine eye-lids close. 
With reverential resignation, 
No wish conceived, no thought exprest, 
Only a sense of supplication ; 
A sense o'er all my soul imprest 
That I am weak, yet not unblest, 



XXIV INTR OD UC TION, 

Since in me, round me, everywhere 
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are." 

As time passes we are less likely to insist that 
Emerson was a great poet, a great essayist, or a great 
philosopher even ; but we shall be more likely to 
realize what Matthew Arnold said of him as best re- 
vealing his true greatness. " As Wordsworth's poetry 
is, in my judgment," says Arnold, " the most impor- 
tant work done in verse, in our language, during the 
present century, so Emerson's essays are, I think, the 
most important work done in prose. ... To us he 
shows for guidance his lucid freedom, his cheerfulness 
and hope ; to you his dignity, delicacy, serenity, ele- 
vation. ... He is the friend and aider of those who 
would live in the Spirit." 

Throughout a long and singularly eventful life he 
was our Happy Warrior, — 

" The generous Spirit, who, when brought 
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought : 
Whose high endeavors are an inward light 
That makes the path before him always bright. 

******* 
A Soul whose master-bias leans 
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes ; 
Sweet images ! which, wheresoe'er he be. 
Are at his heart ; and such fidelity 
It is his darling passion to approve ; 
More brave for this, that he hath much to love : — 

******* 
Who, with a toward or untoward lot. 
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not — 



INTR OD UC TION. XXV 

Plays, in the many games of life, that one 
Where what he most doth value must be won : 
Whom neither shape nor danger can dismay, 
Nor thought of tender happiness betray ; 
Who, not content that former worth stand fast. 
Looks forward, persevering to the last, 
From well to better, daily self-surpast : 
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth 
Forever, and to noble deeds give birth. 
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame. 
And leave a dead, unprofitable name — 
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause ; 
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws 
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause." 

ANDREW J. GEORGE. 
Brookline, Mass., 
Feb. i6, 1903. 



I. 

FATE. 



Delicate omens traced in air 
To the lone bard true witness bare ; 
Birds with auguries on their wings 
Chanted undeceiving things 
Him to beckon, him to warn ; 
Well might then the poet scorn 
To learn of scribe or courier 
Hints writ in vaster character ; 
And on his mind, at dawn of day, 
Sott shadows of the evening lay. 
For the prevision is allied 
Unto the thing so signified ; 
Or say, the foresight that awaits 
Is the same Genius that creates. 



FATE. 

It chanced during one winter, a few years ago, 
that our cities were bent on discussing the theory of 
the Age. By an odd coincidence, four or five noted 
men were each reading a discourse to the citizens of 
Boston or New York, on the Spirit of the Times. It 
so happened that the subject had the same promi- 
nence in some remarkable pamphlets and journals 
issued in London in the same season. To me, how- 
ever, the question of the times resolved itself into a 
practical question of the conduct of life. How shall 
I live ? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our 
geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevail- 
ing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their 
opposition. We can only obey our own polarity. 
'Tis fine for us to speculate and elect our course, if 
we must accept an irresistible dictation. 

In our first steps to gain our wishes, we come upon 
immovable Hmitations. We are fired with the hope 
to reform men. After many experiments, we find 
that we must begin earlier, — at school. But the 
boys and girls are not docile ; we can make nothing 
of them. We decide that they are not of good stock. 
We must begin our reform eariier still, — at genera- 
tion : that is to say, there is Fate, or laws of the 
world, 

3 



4 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

But if there be irresistible dictation, this dictation 
understands itself. If we must accept Fate, we are 
not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance 
of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of 
character. This is true, and that other is true. But 
our geometry cannot span these extreme points, and 
reconcile them. What to do ? By obeying each 
thought frankly, by harping, or, if you will, pounding 
on each string, we learn at last its power. By the 
same obedience to other thoughts, we learn theirs, 
and then comes some reasonable hope of harmonizing 
them. We are sure, that, though we know not how, 
necessity does comport with liberty, the individual 
with the worlds my polarity with the spirit of the 
times. The riddle of the age has for each a private 
solution. If one would study his own time, it must 
be by this method of taking up in turn each of the 
leading topics which belong to our scheme of human 
life, and, by firmly stating all that is agreeable to 
experience on one, and doing the same justice to the 
opposing facts in the others, the true limitations will 
appear. Any excess of emphasis, on one part, would 
be corrected, and a just balance would be made. 

But let us honestly state the facts. Our America 
has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, great 
nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but per- 
ceivers of the terror of life, and have manned them- 
selves to face it. The Spartan, embodying his reli- 
gion in his country, dies before its majesty without a 
question. The Turk, who believes his doom is written 
on the iron leaf in the moment when he entered the 
world, rushes on the enemy's sabre with undivided 



FATE. 5 

will. The Turk, the Arab, the Persian, accepts the 
foreordained fate. 

" On two days, it steads not to run from thy grave, 
The appointed, and the unappointed day ; 
On the first, neither balm nor physician can save, 
Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay." 

The Hindoo, under the wheel, is as firm. Our Cal- 
vinists, in the last generation, had something of the 
same dignity. They felt that the weight of the Uni- 
verse held them down to their place. What could 
they do ? Wise men feel that there is something 
which cannot be talked or voted away, — a strap or 
belt which girds the world. 

" The Destiny, minister general. 
That executeth in the world o'er all, 
The purveyance which God hath seen beforne, 
So strong it is, that tho' the world had sworn 
The contrary of a thing by yea or nay, 
Yet sometime it shall fallen on a day 
That falleth not oft in a thousand year ; 
For, certainly, our appetites here, 
Be it of war, or peace, or hate, or love, 
All this is ruled by the sight above." 

Chaucer : The Knighte's Tale. 

The Greek Tragedy expressed the same sense : 
" Whatever is fated, that will take place. The great 
immense mind of Jove is not to be transgressed." 

Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. 
The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to 
village theologies, which preach an election or favor- 
itism. And, now and then, an amiable parson, like 
Jung StilUng, or Robert Huntington, believes in a 



6 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

pistareen-Providence, which, whenever the good man 
wants a dinner, makes that somebody shall knock at 
his door, and leave a half-dollar. But Nature is no 
sentimentalist, — does not cosset or pamper us. We 
must see that the world is rough and surly, and will 
not mind drowning a man or a woman ; but swallows 
your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsider- 
ate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, 
freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the ele- 
ments, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. 
The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of 
snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other 
leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones 
of his prey in the coil of the anaconda, — these are in 
the system, and our habits are like theirs. You have 
just dined, and, however scrupulously the slaughter- 
house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, 
there is complicity, — expensive races, — race living 
at the expense of race. The planet is liable to shocks 
from comets, perturbations from planets, rendings 
from earthquake and volcano, alterations of climate, 
precessions of equinoxes. Rivers dry up by opening 
of the forest. The sea changes its bed. Towns and 
counties fall into it. At Lisbon, an earthquake killed 
men like flies. At Naples, three years ago, ten thou- 
sand persons were crushed in a few minutes. The 
scurvy at sea ; the sword of the climate in the west 
of Africa, at Cayenne, at Panama, at New Orleans, cut 
off men like a massacre. Our western prairie shakes 
with fever and ague. The cholera, the small-pox, 
have proved as mortal to some tribes, as a frost to 
the crickets, which, having filled the summer with 



FATE. 7 

noise, are silenced by a fall of the temperature of one 
night. Without uncovering what does not concern 
us, or counting how many species of parasites hang 
on a bombyx ; or groping after intestinal parasites, or 
infusory biters, or the obscurities of alternate genera- 
tion ; the forms of the shark, the labrus, the jaw of 
the sea-wolf paved with crushing teeth, the weapons 
of the grampus, and other warriors hidden in the sea, 
— are hints of ferocity in the interiors of nature. 
Let us not deny it up and down. Providence has a 
wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of 
no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instru- 
m'entalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in 
a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in 
divinity. 

Will you say, the disasters which threaten mankind 

, are exceptional, and one need not lay his account for 

^ cataclysms every day ? Aye, but what happens once, 

may happen again, and so long as these strokes are 

not to be parried by us, they must be feared. 

But these shocks and ruins are less destructive to 
us, than the stealthy power of other laws which act 
on us daily. An expense of ends to means is fate ; — 
organization tyrannizing over character. The men- 
agerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book 
of fate : the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, 
determines tyrannically its limits. So is the scale of 
races, of temperaments ; so is sex ; so is climate ; so 
is the reaction of talents imprisoning the vital power 
in certain directions. Every spirit makes its house ; 
but afterwards the house confines the spirit. 

The gross lines are legible to the dull : the cab- 



8 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

man is phrenologist so far : he looks in your face to 
see if his shilling is sure. A dome of brow denotes 
one thing ; a pot-belly, another ; a squint, a pug-nose, 
mats of hair, the pigment of the epidermis, betray 
character. People seem sheathed in their tough 
organization. Ask Spurzheim, ask the doctors, ask 
Quetelet, if temperaments decide nothing? or if there 
be anything they do not decide? Read the descrip- 
tion in medical books of the four temperaments, and 
you will think you are reading your own thoughts 
which you had not yet told. Find the part which 
black eyes, and which blue eyes, play severally in the 
company. How shall a man escape from his ances- 
tors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which 
he drew from his father's or his mother's life? It 
often appears in a family, as if all the qualities of the 
progenitors were potted in several jars, — some ruling 
quality in each son or daughter of the house, — and 
sometimes the unmixed temperament, the rank un- 
mitigated elixir, the family vice, is drawn off in a sep- 
arate individual, and the others are proportionally 
relieved. We sometimes see a change of expression 
in our companion, and say, his father, or his mother, 
comes to the windows of his eyes, and sometimes a 
remote relative. In different hours, a man represents 
each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven 
or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, — seven 
or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the 
variety of notes for that new piece of music which his 
life is. At the corner of the street, you read the pos- 
sibility of each passenger, in the facial angle, in the 
complexion, in the depth of his eye. His parentage 



FA TE. 9 

determines it. Men are what their mothers made 
them. You may as well ask a loom which weaves 
huckaback, why it does not make cashmere, as ex- 
pect poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discov- 
ery from that jobber. Ask the digger in the ditch to 
explain Newton's laws : the fine organs of his brain 
have been pinched by overwork an4 squalid poverty 
from father to son, for a hundred years. When each 
comes forth from his mother's womb, the gate of gifts 
closes behind him. Let him value his hands and feet, 
he has but one pair. So he has but one future, and 
that is already predetermined in his lobes, and de- 
scribed in that little fatty face, pig-eye, and squat 
form. All the privilege and all the legislation of the 
world cannot meddle or help to make a poet or a 
prince of him. 

Jesus said, "When he looketh on her, he hath 
committed adultery." But he is an adulterer before 
he has yet looked on the woman, by the superfluity 
of animal, and the defect of thought, in his consti- 
tution. Who meets him, or who meets her, in the 
street, sees that they are ripe to be each other's 
victim. 

In certain men, digestion and sex absorb the vital 
force, and the stronger these are, the individual is 
so much weaker. The more of these drones perish, 
the better for the hive. If, later, they give birth to 
some superior individual, with force enough to add 
to this animal a new aim, and a complete apparatus 
to work it out, all the ancestors are gladly forgotten. 
Most men and most women are merely one couple 
more. Now and then, one has a new cell or cama- 



lO CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

rilla opened in his brain, — an architectural, a musi- 
cal, or a philological knack, some stray taste or talent 
for flowers, or chemistry, or pigments, or story-telling, 
a good hand for drawing, a good foot for dancing, an 
athletic frame for wide journeying, &c. — which skill 
nowise alters rank in the scale of nature, but serves 
to pass the time, the life of sensation going on as 
before. At last, these hints and tendencies are fixed 
in one, or in a succession. Each absorbs so much 
food and force, as to become itself a new centre. 
The new talent draws off so rapidly the vital force, 
that not enough remains for the animal functions, 
hardly enough for health ; so that, in the second 
generation, if the like genius appear, the health 
is visibly deteriorated, and the generative force im- 
paired. 

People are born with the moral or with the mate- 
rial bias ; — uterine brothers with this diverging des- 
tination : and I suppose, with high magnifiers, Mr. 
Frauenhofer or Dr. Carpenter might come to dis- 
tinguish in the embryo at the fourth day, this is a 
Whig, and that a Free-soiler. 

It was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain of 
Fate, to reconcile this despotism of race with Hberty, 
which led the Hindoos to say, " Fate is nothing but 
the deeds committed in a prior state of existence." 
I find the coincidence of the extremes of eastern and 
western speculation in the daring statement of Schel- 
ling, " there is in every man a certain feeling, that he 
has been what he is from all eternity, and by no 
means became such in time." To say it less sub- 
limely, — in the history of the individual is always an 



FATE. II 



a party to his present estate. 

A good deal of our politics is physiological. Now 
and then, a man of wealth in the heyday of youth 
adopts the tenet of broadest freedom. In England, 
there is always some man of wealth and large con- 
nection planting himself, during all his years of 
health, on the side of progress, who, as soon as he 
begins to die, checks his forward play, calls in his 
troops, and becomes conservative. All conservatives 
are such from personal defects. They have been 
effeminated by position or nature, born halt and 
blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, 
like invalids, act on the defensive. But strong na- 
tures, backwoodsmen. New Hampshire giants. Napo- 
leons, Burkes, Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, are 
inevitable patriots, until their life ebbs, and their 
defects and gout, palsy and money, warp them. 

The strongest idea incarnates itself in majorities 
and nations, in the healthiest and strongest. Prob- 
ably, the election goes by avoirdupois weight, and, if 
you could weigh bodily the tonnage of any hundred 
of the Whig and the Democratic party in a town, on the 
Dearborn balance, as they passed the hayscales, you 
could predict with certainty which party would carry 
it. On the whole, it would be rather the speediest 
way of deciding the vote, to put the selectmen or the 
mayor and aldermen at the hayscales. 

In science, we have to consider two things : power 
and circumstance. All we know of the egg, from 
each successive discovery, is, another vesicle; and if, 
after five hundred years, you get a better observer, 



12 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

or a better glass, he finds within the last observed 
another. In vegetable and animal tissue, it is just 
alike, and all that the primary power or spasm oper- 
ates, is, still, vesicles, vesicles. Yes, — but the tyran- 
nical Circumstance ! A vesicle in new circumstances, 
a vesicle lodged in darkness, Oken thought, became 
animal ; in light, a plant. Lodged in the parent 
animal, it suffers changes, which end in unsheath- 
ing miraculous capability in the unaltered vesicle, and 
it unlocks itself to fish, bird, or quadruped, head and 
foot, eye and claw. The Circumstance is Nature. 
Nature is, what you may do. There is much you 
may not. We have two things, — the circumstance 
and the life. Once we thought, positive power was 
all. Now we learn, that negative power, or circum- 
stance, is half. Nature is the tyrannous circumstance, 
the thick skull, the sheathed snake, the ponderous, 
rock-like jaw ; necessitated activity ; violent direc- 
tion ; the conditions of a tool, like the locomotive, 
strong enough on its track, but which can do nothing 
but mischief off of it ; or skates, which are wings on 
the ice, but fetters on the ground. 

The book of Nature is the book of Fate. She 
turns the gigantic pages, — leaf after leaf, — never 
re-turning one. One leaf she lays down, a floor of 
granite ; then a thousand ages, and a bed of slate ; 
a thousand ages, and a measure of coal ; a thousand 
ages, and a layer of marl and mud : vegetable forms 
appear ; her first misshapen animals, zoophyte, trilo- 
bium, fish ; then, saurians, — rude forms, in which she 
has only blocked her future statue, concealing under 
these unwieldy monsters the fine type of her coming 



FATE. 13 

king. The face of the planet cools and dries, the 
races meliorate, and man is born. But when a race 
has lived its term, it comes no more again. 

The population of the world is a conditional popu- 
lation ; not the best, but the best that could live 
now ; and the scale of tribes, and the steadiness with 
which victory adheres to one tribe, and defeat to 
another, is as uniform as the superposition of strata. 
We know in history what weight belongs to race. 
We see the English, French, and Germans planting 
themselves on every shore and market of America 
and Austraha, and monopolizing the commerce of 
these countries. We like the nervous and victorious 
habit of our own branch of the family. We follow 
the step of the Jew, of the Indian, of the Negro. We 
see how much will has been expended to extinguish 
the Jew, in vain. Look at the unpalatable conclu- 
sions of Knox, in his '" Fragment of Races," — a rash 
and unsatisfactory writer, but charged with pungent 
and unforgetable truths. " Nature respects race, and 
not hybrids." "Every race has its own habitat.'''' 
" Detach a colony from the race, and it deteriorates 
to the crab." See the shades of the picture. The 
German and Irish millions, like the Negro, have a 
great deal of guano in their destiny. They are ferried 
over the Atlantic, and carted over America, to ditch 
and to drudge, to make corn cheap, and then to lie 
down prematurely to make a spot of green grass on 
the prairie. 

One more fagot of these adamantine bandages is 
the new science of Statistics. It is a rule, that the 
most casual and extraordinary events — if the basis of 



14 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

population is broad enough — become matter of fixed 
calculation. It would not be safe to say when a cap- 
tain like Bonaparte, a singer like Jenny Lind, or a 
navigator like Bowditch, would be born in Boston : 
but on a population of twenty or two hundred mill- 
ions, something like accuracy may be had.^ 

'Tis frivolous to fix pedantically the date of par- 
ticular inventions. They have all been invented over 
and over fifty times. Man is the arch machine, of 
which all these shifts drawn from himself are toy 
models. He helps hinlself on each emergency by 
copying or duplicating his own structure, just so far 
as the need is. 'Tis hard to find the right Homer, 
Zoroaster, or Menu; harder still to find the Tubal 
Cain, or Vulcan, or Cadmus, or Copernicus, or Fust, 
or Fulton, the indisputable inventor. There are 
scores and centuries of them. "The air is full of 
men." This kind of talent so abounds, this con- 
structive tool-making efficiency, as if it adhered to the 
chemic atoms, as if the air he breathes were made 
of Vaucansons, Franklins, and Watts. 

Doubtless, in every million there will be an astrono- 
mer, a mathematician, a comic poet, a mystic. No one 
can read the history of astronomy, without perceiving 
that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, 
or a new kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, 

1 " Everything which pertains to the human species, consid- 
ered as a whole, belongs to the order of physical facts. The 
greater the number of individuals, the more does the influence 
of the individual will disappear, leaving predominance to a 
series of general facts dependent on causes by which society 
exists, and is preserved." — QUETELET. 



FATE, 15 

Hipparchus, Empedocles, Aristarchus, Pythagoras, 
GEnipodes, had anticipated them ; each had the same 
tense geometrical brain, apt for the same vigorous 
computation and logic, a mind parallel to the move- 
ment of the world. The Roman mile probably rested 
on a measure of a degree of the meridian. Mahometan 
and Chinese know what we know of leap-year, of the 
Gregorian calendar, and of the precession of the equi- 
noxes. As, in every barrel of cowries, brought to 
New Bedford, there shall be one orangia, so there 
will, in a dozen millions of Malays and Mahometans, 
be one or two astronomical skulls. In a large city, 
the most casual things, and things whose beauty lies 
in their casualty, are produced as punctually and to 
order as the baker's muffin for breakfast. Punch makes 
exactly one capital joke a week ; and the journals con- 
trive to furnish one good piece of news every day. 

And not less work the laws of repression, the pen- 
alties of violated functions. FaiYiine, typhus, frost, 
war, suicide, and effete races, must be reckoned cal- 
culable parts of the system of the world. 

These are pebbles from the mountain, hints of 
the terms by which our life is walled up, and which 
show a kind of mechanical exactness, as of a loom or 
mill, in what we call casual or fortuitous events. 

The force with which we resist these torrents of 
tendency looks so ridiculously inadequate, that it 
amounts to little more than a criticism or a protest 
made by a minority of one, under compulsion of mill- 
ions. I seemed, in the height of a tempest, to see 
men overboard struggling jn the waves, and driven 
about here and there. They glanced intelligently at 



1 6 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

each other, but 'twas little they could do for one 
another ; 'twas much if each could keep afloat alone. 
Well, they had a right to their eye-beams, and all the 
rest was Fate. 

We cannot trifle with this reality, this cropping 
out in our planted gardens of the core of the world. 
No picture of life can have any veracity that does not 
admit the odious facts. A man's power is hooped 
in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he 
touches on every side, until he learns its arc. 

The element running through entire nature, which 
we popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. 
Whatever limits us, we call Fate. If we are brute and 
barbarous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful shape. 
As we refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to 
spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form. 
In the Hindoo fables, Vishnu follows Maya through 
all her ascending changes, from insect and crawfish 
up to elephant ; whatever form she took, he took the 
male form of that kind, until she became at last 
woman and goddess, and he a man and a god. The 
limitations refine as the soul purifies, but the ring of 
necessity is always perched at the top. 

When the gods in the Norse heaven were unable 
to bind the Fenris Wolf with steel or with weight of 
mountains, — the one he snapped and the other he 
spurned with his heel, — they put round his foot a 
limp band softer than silk or cobweb, and this held 
him : the more he spurned it, the stiflfer it drew. So 
soft and so stanch is the ring of Fate. Neither 
brandy, nor nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, 



FATE. 17 

nor ichor, nor poetry, nor genius, can get rid of this 
limp band. For if we give it the high sense in which 
the poets use it, even thought itself is not above Fate : 
that too must act according to eternal laws, and all 
that is wilful and fantastic in it is in opposition to 
its fundamental essence. 

And, last of all, high over thought, in the world 
of morals. Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the 
high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and al- 
ways striking soon or late, when justice is not done. 
What is useful will last ; what is hurtful will sink. 
" The doer must suffer," said the Greeks : " you 
wduld soothe a Deity not to be soothed." "God 
himself cannot procure good for the wicked," said 
the Welsh triad. " God may consent, but only for a 
time," said the bard of Spain. The limitation is im- 
passable by any insight of man. In its last and lofti- 
est ascensions, insight itself, and the freedom of the 
will, is one of its obedient members. But we must 
not run into generalizations too large, but show the 
natural bounds or essential distinctions, and seek to 
do justice to the other elements as w^ell. 

Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, and morals, — 
in race, in retardations of strata, and in thought and 
character as well. It is everywhere bound or limita- 
tion. But Fate has its lord ; limitation its limits ; is 
different seen from above and from below; from 
within and from without. For, though Fate is im- 
mense, so is power, which is the other fact in the dual 
world, immense. If Fate follows and limits power, 
power attends and antagonizes Fate. We must re- 



1 8 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

spect Fate as natural history, but there is more than 
natural history. For who and what is this criticism 
that pries into the matter ? Man is not order of na- 
ture, sack and sack, belly and members, link in a 
chain, nor any ignominious baggage, but a stupendous 
antagonism, a dragging together of the poles of the 
Universe. He betrays his relation to what is below 
him, — thick-skulled, small-brained, fishy, quadruma- 
nous, — quadruped ill-disguised, hardly escaped into 
biped, and has paid for the new powers by loss of 
some of the old ones. But the lightning which ex- 
plodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and 
suns, is in him. On one side, elemental order, sand- 
stone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea 
and shore ; and, on the other part, thought, the spirit 
which composes and decomposes nature, — here they 
are, side by side, god and devil, mind and matter, king 
and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully to- 
gether in the eye and brain of every man. 

Nor can he blink the freewill. To hazard the con- 
tradiction, — freedom is necessary. If you please to 
plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say, Fate is all ; 
then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of man. 
Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting 
in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man 
thinks, he is free. And though nothing is more dis- 
gusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as 
most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom 
of some paper preamble like a "Declaration of Inde- 
pendence," or the statute right to vote, by those who 
have never dared to think or to act, yet it is whole- 
some to man to look not at Fate, but the other way : 



FATE. 19 

the practical view is the other. His sound relation to 
these facts is to use and command, not to cringe to 
them. " Look not on nature, for her name is fatal," 
said the oracle. The too much contemplation of these 
limits induces meanness. They who talk much of des- 
tiny, their birth-star, &c., are in a lower dangerous plane, 
and invite the evils they fear. 

I cited the instinctive and heroic races as proud be- 
lievers in Destiny. They conspire with it ; a loving 
resignation is with the event. But the dogma makes 
a different impression, when it is held by the weak 
and lazy. 'Tis weak and vicious people who cast 
the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to bring 
up our conduct to the loftiness of nature. Rude and 
invincible except by themselves are the elements. 
So let man be. Let him empty his breast of his 
windy conceits, and show his lordship by manners 
and deeds on the scale of nature. Let him hold his 
purpose as with the tug of gravitation. No power, 
no persuasion, no bribe shall make him give up his 
point. A man ought to compare advantageously with 
a river, an oak, or a mountain. He shall have not 
less the flow, the expansion, and the resistance of these. 

'Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal courage. 
Go face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's 
house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger 
lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by 
the cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to 
your harm, believe it, at least, for your good. 

For, if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, 
and can confront fate with fate. If the Universe 
have these savage accidents, our atoms are as savage 



20 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

in resistance. We should be crushed by the atmos- 
phere, but for the reaction of the air within the body. 
A tube made of a film of glass can resist the shock of 
the ocean, if filled with the same water. If there be 
omnipotence in the stroke, there is omnipotence of 
recoil, 

I . But Fate against Fate is only parrying and de- 
fence : there are, also, the noble creative forces. The 
revelation of Thought takes man out of servitude into 
freedom. We rightly say of ourselves, we were born, 
and afterward we were born again, and many times. 
We have successive experiences so important, that 
the new forgets the old, and hence the mythology of 
the seven or the nine heavens. The day of days, the 
great day of the feast of life, is that in which the inward 
eye opens to the Unity in things, to the omnipresence 
of law ; — sees that what is must be, and ought to be, 
oris the best. This beatitude dips from on high down 
on us, and we see. It is not in us so much as we are 
in it. If the air come to our lungs, we breathe and 
live ; if not, we die. If the light come to our eyes, we 
see ; else not. And if truth come to our mind, we 
suddenly expand to its dimensions, as if we grew to 
worlds. We are as lawgivers ; we speak for Nature ; 
we prophesy and divine. 

This insight throws us on the party and interest of 
the Universe, against all and sundry ; against ourselves, 
as much as others. A man speaking from insight af- 
firms of himself what is true of the mind : seeing its 
immortality, he says, I am immortal ; seeing its invin- 
cibility, he says, I am strong. It is not in us, but we 
are in it. It is of the maker, not of what is made. 



FATE. 21 

All things are touched and changed by it. This uses, 
and is not used. It distances those who share it, from 
those who share it not. Those who share it not are 
flocks and herds. It dates from itself; — not from 
former men or better men, — gospel, or constitution, 
or college, or custom. Where it shines. Nature is 
no longer intrusive, but all things make a musical or 
pictorial impression. The world of men show like 
a comedy without laughter : — populations, interests, 
government, history ; — 'tis all toy figures in a toy 
house. It does not overvalue particular truths. We 
hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an 
intellectual man. But, in his presence, our own mind 
is roused to activity, and we forget very fast what he 
says, much more interested in the new play of our own 
thought, than in any thought of his. 'Tis the majesty 
into which we have suddenly mounted, the imperson- 
ality, the scorn of egotisms, the sphere of laws, that 
engage us. Once we were stepping a little this way, 
and a little that way ; now, we are as men in a balloon, 
and do not think so much of the point we have left, or 
the point we would make, as of the liberty and glory 
of the way. 

Just as much intellect as you add, so much organic 
power. He who sees through the design, presides 
over it, and must will that which must be. We sit 
and rule, and, though we sleep, our dream will come 
to pass. Our thought, though it were only an hour 
old, affirms an oldest necessity, not to be separated 
from thought, and not to be separated from will. 
They must always have coexisted. It apprises us of 
its sovereignty and godhead, which refuse to be severed 



22 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

from it. It is not mine or thine, but the will of all 
mind. It is poured into the souls of all men, as the 
soul itself which constitutes them men. I know not 
whether there be, as is alleged, in the upper region of 
our atmosphere, a permanent westerly current, which 
carries with it all atoms which rise to that height, but I 
see, that when souls reach a certain clearness of percep- 
tion, they accept a knowledge and motive above self- 
ishness. A breath of will blows eternally through 
the universe of souls in the direction of the Right 
and Necessary. It is the air which all intellects inhale 
and exhale, and it is the wind which blows the worlds 
into order and orbit. 

Thought dissolves the material universe, by carrying 
the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic. Of 
two men, each obeying his own thought, he whose 
thought is deepest will be the strongest character. 
Always one man more than another represents the 
will of Divine Providence to the period. 

2. If thought makes free, so does the moral senti- 
ment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to 
be analyzed. Yet we can see that with the percep- 
tion of truth is joined the desire that it shall prevail. 
That affection is essential to will. Moreover, when 
a strong will appears, it usually results from a certain 
unity of organization, as if the whole energy of body 
and mind flowed in one direction. All great force is 
real and elemental. There is no manufacturing a strong 
will. There must be a pound to balance a pound. 
Where power is shown in will, it must rest on the uni- 
versal force. Alaric and Bonaparte must believe they 



FATE. 23 

There is a bribe possible for any finite will. But the 
pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite force, 
and cannot be bribed or bent. Whoever has had 
experience of the moral sentiment cannot choose but 
believe in unlimited power. Each pulse from that 
heart is an oath from the Most High. I know not 
what the word sublime means, if it be not the intima- 
tions in this infant of a terrific force. A text of hero- 
ism, a name and anecdote of courage, are not 
arguments, but sallies of freedom. One of these is 
the verse of the Persian Hafiz, " 'Tis written on the 
gate of Heaven, ' Wo unto him who suffers himself to 
be betrayed by Fate ! ' " Does the reading of history 
make us fatalists? What courage does not the op- 
posite opinion show ! A little whim of will to be free 
gallantly contending against the universe of chemistry. 

But insight is not will, nor is affection will. Per- 
ception is cold, and goodness dies in wishes ; as 
Voltaire said, 'tis the misfortune of worthy people that 
they are cowards ; " tin des plus grands malheurs des 
honnHes gens c^est qtiHls sont des Idches.'''' There must 
be a fusion of these two to generate the energy of will. 
There can be no driving force, except through the 
conversion of the man into his will, making him the 
will, and the will him. And one may say boldly, 
that no man has a right perception of any truth, who 
has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be 
its martyr. 

The one serious and formidable thing in nature is a 
will. Society is servile from want of will, and there- 
fore the world wants saviours and religions. One 
way is right to go : the hero sees it, and moves on 



24 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

that aim, and has the world under him for root and 
support. He is to others as the world. His appro- 
bation is honor ; his dissent, infamy. The glance of 
his eye has the force of sunbeams. A personal in- 
fluence towers up in memory only worthy, and we 
gladly forget numbers, money, climate, gravitation, 
and the rest of Fate. 

We can afford to allow the limitation, if we know it 
is the meter of the growing man. We stand against 
Fate, as children stand up against the wall in 
their father^s house, and notch their height from year 
to year. But when the boy grows to man, and is 
master of the house, he pulls down that wall, and 
builds a new and bigger. 'Tis only a question of 
time. Every brave youth is in training to ride and 
rule this dragon. His science is to make weapons 
and wings of these passions and retarding forces. 
Now whether, seeing these two things, fate and power, 
we are permitted to believe in unity ? The bulk of 
mankind believe in two gods. They are under one 
dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, 
in social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion : 
but in mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, 
in trade, in politics, they think they come under 
another ; and that it would be a practical blunder 
to transfer the method and way of working of one 
sphere, into the other. What good, honest, generous 
men at home, will be wolves and foxes on change! 
What pious men in the parlor will vote for what 
reprobates at the polls ! To a certain point, they 
believe themselves the care of a Providence. But, in 



FATE. 25 

a steamboat, in an epidemic, in war, they believe 
a malignant energy rules. 

But relation and connection are not somewhere and 
sometimes, but everywhere and always. The divine 
order does not stop where their sight stops. The 
friendly power works on the same rules, in the next 
farm, and the next planet. But, where they have not 
experience, they run against it, and hurt themselves. 
Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the 
fire of thought ; — for causes which are unpenetrated. 

But every jet of chaos which threatens to exter- 
minate us, is convertible by intellect into wholesome 
force. Fate is unpenetrated causes. The water drowns 
ship and sailor, like a grain of dust. But learn to 
swim, trim your bark, and the wave which drowned 
it, will be cloven by it, and carry it, like its own foam, 
a plume and a power. The cold is inconsiderate 
of persons, tingles your blood, freezes a man like 
a dew-drop. But learn to skate, and the ice will give 
you a graceful, sweet, and poetic motion. The cold 
will brace your limbs and brain to genius, and make 
you foremost men of time. Cold and sea will train an 
imperial Saxon race, which nature cannot bear to 
lose, and, after cooping it up for a thousand years in 
yonder England, gives a hundred Englands, a hun- 
dred Mexicos. All the bloods it shall absorb and 
domineer : and more than Mexicos, — the secrets 
of water and steam, the spasms of electricity, the 
ductility of metals, the chariot of the air, the ruddered 
balloon are awaiting you. 

The annual slaughter from typhus far exceeds that 
of war; but right drainage destroys typhus. The 



26 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

plague in the sea-service from scurvy is healed by 
lemon juice and other diets portable or procurable : 
the depopulation by cholera and small-pox is ended 
by drainage and vaccination ; and every other pest is 
not less in the chain of cause and effect, and may 
be fought off. And, vi^hilst art draws out the venom, 
it commonly extorts some benefit from the van- 
quished enemy. The mischievous torrent is taught 
to drudge for man : the wild beasts he makes useful 
for food, or dress, or labor ; the chemic explosions are 
controlled like his watch. These are now the steeds 
on which he rides. Man moves in all modes, by legs 
of horses, by wings of wind, by steam, by gas of 
balloon, by electricity, and stands on tiptoe threaten- 
ing to hunt the eagle in his own element. There''s 
nothing he will not make his carrier. 

Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we 
dreaded. Every pot made by any human potter or 
brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the enemy, 
lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house 
away. But the Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and 
Fulton bethought themselves, that, where was power, 
was not devil, but was God ; that it must be availed 
of, and not by any means let off and wasted. Could 
he lift pots and roofs and houses so handily ? he was 
the workman they were in search of. He could be 
used to lift away, chain, and compel other devils, far 
more reluctant and dangerous, namely, cubic miles of 
earth, mountains, weight or resistance of water, ma- 
chinery, and the labors of all men in the world ; and 
time he shall lengthen, and shorten space. 

It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds 



FATE. 27 

of steam. The opinion of the million was the terror 
of the world, and it was attempted, either to dissipate 
it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over with strata of 
society, — a layer of soldiers ; over that, a layer of 
lords ; and a king on the top ; with clamps and hoops 
of castles, garrisons, and police. But, sometimes, the 
religious principle would get in, and burst the hoops, 
and rive every mountain laid on top of it. The 
Fultons and Watts of politics, believing in unity, saw 
that it was a power, and, by satisfying it, (as justice 
satisfies everybody,) through a different disposition of 
society, — grouping it on a level, instead of piling it 
into a mountain, — they have contrived to make of 
this terror the most harmless and energetic form of a 
State. 

Very odious, I confess, are the lessons of Fate. 
Who likes to have a dapper phrenologist pronouncing 
on his fortunes ? Who likes to believe that he has 
hidden in his skull, spine, and pelvis, all the vices of 
a Saxon or Celtic race, which will be sure to pull him 
down, — with what grandeur of hope and resolve he 
is fired, — into a selfish, huckstering, servile, dodging 
animal ? A learned physician tells us, the fact is 
invariable with the Neapolitan, that, when mature, he 
assumes the forms of the unmistakable scoundrel. 
That is a Httle overstated, — but may pass. 

But these are magazines and arsenals. A man must 
thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his 
talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on 
his forces, as to lame him ; a defect pays him revenues 
on the other side. The sufferance, which is the badge 
of the Jew, has made him, in these days, the ruler of 



28 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

the rulers of the earth. If Fate is ore and quarry, if 
evil is good in the making, if limitation is power that 
shall be, if calamities, oppositions, and weights are 
wings and means, — we are reconciled. 

Fate involves the melioration. No statement of the 
Universe can have any soundness, which does not 
admit its ascending effort. The direction of the 
whole, and of the parts, is toward benefit, and in pro- 
portion to the health. Behind every individual, closes 
organization : before him, opens liberty, — the Better, 
the Best. The first and worst races are dead. The 
second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain 
for the maturing of higher. In the latest race, in man, 
every generosity, every new perception, the love and 
praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of 
advance out of fate into freedom. Liberation of the 
will from the sheaths and clogs of organization which 
he has outgrown, is the end and aim of this world. 
Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint; and 
where his endeavors do not yet fully avail, they tell as 
tendency. The whole circle of animal life, — tooth 
against tooth, — devouring war, war for food, a yelp of 
pain and a grunt of triumph, until, at last, the whole 
menagerie, the whole chemical mass is mellowed and 
refined for higher use, — pleases at a sufficient per- 
spective. 

But to see how fate slides into freedom, and freedom 
into fate, observe how far the roots of every creature 
run, or find, if you can, a point where there is no 
thread of connection. Our life is consentaneous and 
far-related. This knot of nature is so well tied, that 
nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends. 



FATE, 29 

Nature is intricate, overlapped, interweaved, and end- 
less. Christopher Wren said of the beautiful King's 
College chapel, " that, if anybody would tell him 
where to lay the first stone, he would build such 
another." But where shall we find the first atom in 
this house of man, which is all consent, inosculation, 
and balance of parts ? 

The web of relation is shown in habitat^ shown in 
hybernation. When hybernation was observed, it 
was found, that, whilst some animals became torpid 
in winter, others were torpid in summer : hybernation 
then was a false name. The lotig sleep is not an effect 
of cold, but is regulated by the supply of food proper 
to the animal. It becomes torpid when the fruit or 
prey it lives on is not in season, and regains its 
activity when its food is ready. 

Eyes are found in light ; ears in auricular air ; feet 
on land ; fins in water ; wings in air ; and, each 
creature where it was meant to be, with a mutual 
fitness. Every zone has its own Fauna. There is 
adjustment between the animal and its food, its 
parasite, its enemy. Balances are kept. It is not 
allowed to diminish in numbers, nor to exceed. The 
like adjustments exist for man. His food is cooked, 
when he arrives ; his coal in the pit ; the house 
ventilated; the mud of the deluge dried; his com- 
panions arrived at the same hour, and awaiting him 
with love, concert, laughter, and tears. These are 
coarse adjustments, but the invisible are not less. 
There are more belongings to every creature than his 
air and his food. His instincts must be met, and he 
has predisposing power that bends and fits what is 



30 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

near him to his use. He is not possible until the 
invisible things are right for him, as well as the visible. 
Of what changes, then, in sky and earth, and in 
finer skies and earths, does the appearance of some 
Dante or Columbus apprise us ! 

How is this effected ? Nature is no spendthrift, 
but takes the shortest way to her ends. As the gen- 
eral says to his soldiers, " if you want a fort, build a 
fort," so nature makes every creature do its own work 
and get its living, — is it planet, animal, or tree. The 
planet makes itself. The animal cell makes itself; — 
then, what it wants. Every creature, — wren or 
dragon, — shall make its own lair. As soon as there 
is life, there is self-direction, and absorbing and using 
of material. Life is freedom, — life in the direct ratio 
of its amount. You may be sure, the new-born man 
is not inert. Life works both voluntarily and super- 
naturally in its neighborhood. Do you suppose, he 
can be estimated by his weight in pounds, or, that he 
is contained in his skin, — this reaching, radiating, 
jaculating fellow ? The smallest candle fills a mile 
with its rays, and the papillae of a man run out to 
every star. 

When there is something to be done, the world 
knows how to get it done. The vegetable eye makes 
leaf, pericarp, root, bark, or thorn, as the need is ; the 
first cell converts itself into stomach, mouth, nose, or 
nail, according to the want : the world throws its life 
into a hero or a shepherd ; and puts him where he is 
wanted. Dante and Columbus were Italians, in their 
time : they would be Russians or Americans to-day. 
Things ripen, new men come. The adaptation is not 



FATE. 31 

capricious. The ulterior aim, the purpose beyond 
itself, the correlation by which planets subside and 
crystallize, then animate beasts and men, will not 
stop, but will work into finer particulars, and from 
finer to finest. 

The secret of the world is, the tie between person 
and event. Person makes event, and event person. 
The " times," *' the age," what is that, but a few pro- 
found persons and a few active persons who epito- 
mize the times ? — Goethe, Hegel, Metternich, Adams, 
Calhoun, Guizot, Peel, Cobden, Kossuth, Rothschild, 
Astor, Brunei, and the rest. The same fitness must 
be' presumed between a man and the time and event, 
as betw^een the sexes, or between a race of animals 
and the food it eats, or the inferior races it uses. He 
thinks his fate alien, because the copula is hidden. 
But the soul contains the event that shall befall it, 
for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts ; 
and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted. 
The event is the print of your form. It fits you like 
your skin. What each does is proper to him. 
Events are the children of his body and mind. We 
learn that the soul of Fate is the soul of us, as Hafiz 
sings, 

" Alas ! till now I had not known, 
My guide and fortune's guide are one." 

All the toys that infatuate men, and which they play 
for, — houses, land, money, luxury, power, fame, are 
the selfsame thing, with a new gauze or two of 
illusion overlaid. And of all the drums and rattles 
by which men are made willing to have their heads 



32 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

broke, and are led out solemnly every morning to 
parade, — the most admirable is this by which we 
are brought to believe that events are arbitrary, and 
independent of actions. At the conjurer's, we detect 
the hair by which he moves his puppet, but we have 
not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread that ties 
cause and effect. 

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by 
making these the fruit of his character. Ducks take 
to the water, eagles to the sky, waders to the sea 
margin, hunters to the forest, clerks to counting 
rooms, soldiers to the frontier. Thus events grow on 
the same stem with persons ; are sub-persons. The 
pleasure of hfe is according to the man that lives it, 
and not according to the work or the place. Life is 
an ecstasy. We know what madness belongs to love, 
— what power to paint a vile object in hues of heaven. 
As insane persons are indifferent to their dress, diet, 
and other accommodations, and, as we do in dreams, 
with equanimity, the most absurd acts, so, a drop 
more of wine in our cup of life will reconcile us to 
strange company and work. Each creature puts forth 
from itself its own condition and sphere, as the slug 
sweats out its slimy house on the pear-leaf, and the 
woolly aphides on the apple perspire their own bed, 
and the fish its shell. In youth, we clothe ourselves 
with rainbows, and go as brave as the zodiac. In 
age, we put out another sort of perspiration, — gout, 
fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and 
avarice. 

A man's fortunes are the fmit of his character. A 
man's friends are his magnetisms. We go to Herodo- 



FATE, 33 

tus and Plutarch for examples of Fate ; but we are 
examples. " Qiiisque siios patiimir ?naiies.'''' The 
tendency of every man to enact all that is in his 
constitution is expressed in the old belief, that the 
efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only 
serve to lead us into it : and I have noticed, a man 
likes better to be complimented on his position, as the 
proof of the last or total excellence, than on his 
merits. 

A man will see his character emitted in the events 
that seem to meet, but which exude from and 
accompany him. Events expand with the character. 
As once he found himself among toys, so now he 
plays a part in colossal systems, and his growth is 
declared in his ambition, his companions, and his 
performance. He looks like a piece of luck, but is a 
piece of causation ; — the mosaic, angulated and 
ground to fit into the gap he fills. Hence m each 
town there is some man who is, in his brain and per- 
formance, an explanation of the tillage, production, 
factories, banks, churches, ways of living, and society, 
of that town. If you do not chance to meet him, all 
that you see will leave you a little puzzled : if you see 
him, it will become plain. We know in Massachusetts 
who built New Bedford, who built Lynn, Lowell, 
Lawrence, Clinton, Fitchburg, Holyoke, Portland, 
and many another noisy mart. Each of these men, if 
they were transparent, would seem to you not so much 
men, as walking cities, and, wherever you put them, 
they would build one. 

History is the action and reaction of these two, 
— Nature and Thought; — two boys pushing each 



34 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

other on the curb-stone of the pavement. Everything 
is pusher or pushed : and matter and mind are in 
perpetual tilt and balance, so. Whilst the man is 
weak, the earth takes up him. He plants his brain 
and affections. By and by he will take up the earth, 
and have his gardens and vineyards in the beautiful 
order and productiveness of his thought. Every solid 
in the universe is ready to become fluid on the approach 
of the mind, and the power to flux it is the measure 
of the mind. If the wall remain adamant, it accuses 
the want of thought. To a subtler force, it will 
stream into new forms, expressive of the character of 
the mind. What is the city in which we sit here, but 
an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have 
obeyed the will of some man? The granite was 
reluctant, but his hands were stronger, and it came. 
Iron was deep in the ground, and well combined with 
stone ; but could not hide from his fires. Wood, lime, 
stuffs, fruits, gums, were dispersed over the earth and 
sea, in vain. Here they are, within reach of every 
man's day-labor, — what he wants of them. The 
whole world is the flux of matter over the wires of 
thought to the poles or points where it would build. 
The races of men rise out of the ground preoccupied 
with a thought which rules them, and divided into 
parties ready armed and angry to fight for this 
metaphysical abstraction. The quality of the thought 
diff"erences the Egyptian and the Roman, the Austrian 
and the American. The men who come on the stage 
at one period are all found to be related to each other. 
Certain ideas are in the air. We are all impression- 
able, for we are made of them ;• all impressionable, 



FATE. 35 

but some more than others, and these first express 
them. This explains the curious contemporaneous- 
ness of inventions and discoveries. The truth is in 
the air, and the most impressionable brain v^fill 
announce it first, but all will announce it a few 
minutes later. So women, as most susceptible, are 
the best index of the coming hour. So the great 
man, that is, the man most imbued with the spirit of 
the time, is the impressionable man, — of a fibre 
irritable and delicate, like iodine to light. He feels 
the infinitesimal attractions. His mind is righter 
than others, because he yields to a current so feeble 
as -can be felt only by a needle delicately poised. 

The correlation is shown in defects. Moller, in 
his Essay on Architecture, taught that the building 
which was fitted accurately to answer its end, would 
turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been 
intended. I find the like unity in human structures 
rather virulent and pervasive; that a crudity in the 
blood will appear in the argument ; a hump in the 
shoulder will appear in the speech and handiwork. 
If his mind could be seen, the hump would be seen. 
If a man has a seesaw in his voice, it will run mto his 
sentences, into his poem, into the structure of his 
fable, into his speculation, into his charity. And, as 
every man is hunted by his own daemon, vexed by 
his own disease, this checks all his activity. 

So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. 
A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more trucu- 
lent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my 
leaves. Such an one has curculios, borers, knife- 
worms : a swindler ate him first, then a client, then 



36 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter 
and selfish as Moloch. 

This correlation really existing can be divined. 
If the threads are there, thought can follow and show 
them. Especially when a soul is quick and docile ; 
as Chaucer sings, 

" Or if the soul of proper kind 
Be so perfect as men find, 
That it wot what is to come, 
And that he warneth all and some 
Of every of their aventures, 
By previsions or figures ; 
But that our flesh hath not might 
It to understand aright 
For it is warned too darkly." — 

Some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, 
omen, periodicity, and presage : they meet the per- 
son they seek ; what their companion prepares to 
say to them, they first say to him; and a hundred 
signs apprise them of what is about to befall. 

Wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful con- 
stancy in the design this vagabond life admits. We 
wonder how the fly finds its mate, and yet year after 
year we find two men, two women, without legal or 
carnal tie, spend a great part of their best time within 
a few feet of each other. And the moral is, that 
what we seek we shall find ; what we flee from flees 
from us ; as Goethe said, " what we wish for in youth, 
comes in heaps on us in old age," too often cursed 
with the granting of our prayer : and hence the high 
caution, that, since we are sure of having what we 
wish, we beware to ask only for high things. 



FATE. 37 

One key, one solution to the mysteries of human 
condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, free- 
dom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, 
namely, of the double consciousness. A man must 
ride alternately on the horses of his private and his 
public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw 
themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one 
foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the 
back of the other. So when a man is the victim of 
his fate, has sciatica in his loins, and cramp in his 
mind ; a club-foot and a club in his wit ; a sour face, 
and a selfish temper; a strut in his gait, and a 
conceit in his affection; or is ground to powder 
by the vice of his race ; he is to rally on his rela- 
tion to the Universe, which his ruin benefits. Leav- 
ing the daemon who suffers, he is to take sides 
with the Deity who secures universal benefit by his 
pain. 

To offset the drag of temperament and race, which 
pulls down, learn this lesson, namely, that by the 
cunning co-presence of two elements, which is 
throughout nature, whatever lames or paralyzes you, 
draws in with it the divinity, in some form, to repay. 
A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. 
When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will 
bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a 
horse. 

Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity which holds 
nature and souls in perfect solution, and compels 
every atom to serve an universal end. I do not won- 
der at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer landscape, or 
the glory of the stars ; but at the necessity of beauty 



38 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

under which the universe lies; that all is and must 
be pictorial ; that the rainbow, and the curve of the 
horizon, and the arch of the blue vault are only 
results from the organism of the eye. There is no 
need for foolish amateurs to fetch me to admire a 
garden of flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or a waterfall, 
when I cannot look without seeing splendor and 
grace. How idle to choose a random sparkle here or 
there, when the indweUing necessity plants the rose 
of beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the 
central intention of Nature to be harmony and joy. 

Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. If 
we thought men were free in the sense, that, in a 
single exception one fantastical will could prevail 
over the law of things, it were all one as if a child's 
hand could pull down the sun. If, in the least par- 
ticular, one could derange the order of nature, — who 
would accept the gift of life? 

Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, 
which secures that all is made of one piece; that 
plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal and 
planet, food and eater, are of one kind. In astron- 
omy, is vast space, but no foreign system ; in geology, 
vast time, but the same laws as to-day. Why should 
we be afraid of Nature, which is no other than 
" philosophy and theology embodied " ? Why should 
we fear to be crushed by savage elements, we who 
are made up of the same elements ? Let us build 
to the Beautiful Necessity, which makes man brave 
in believing that he cannot shun a danger that is 
appointed, nor incur one that is not ; to the Neces- 
sity which rudely or softly educates him to the per- 



FATE. 39 

ception that there are no contingencies; that Law 
rules throughout existence, a Law which is not intelli- 
gent but intelligence, — not personal nor impersonal, 
— it disdains words and passes understanding; it 
dissolves persons ; it vivifies nature ; yet solicits the 
pure in heart to draw on all its omnipotence. 



II. 

POWER. 



His tongue was framed to music, 
And his hand was armed with skill, 
His face was the mould of beauty, 
And his heart the throne of will. 



POWER. 

There is not yet any inventory of a man's fac- 
ulties, any more than a bible of his opinions. Who 
shall set a limit to the influence of a human being? 
There are men, who, by their sympathetic attractions, 
carry nations with them, and lead the activity of the 
human race. And if there be such a tie, that, wher- 
ever the mind of man goes, nature will accompany 
him, perhaps there are men whose magnetisms are 
of that force to draw material and elemental powers, 
and, where they appear, immense instrumentalities 
organize around them. Life is a search after power; 
and this is an element with which the world is so 
saturated, — there is no chink or crevice in which it 
is not lodged, — that no honest seeking goes unre- 
warded. A man should prize events and possessions 
as the ore in which this fine mineral is found ; and he 
can well afford to let events and possessions, and the 
breath of the body go, if their value has been added 
to him in the shape of power. If he have secured 
the elixir, he can spare the wide gardens from which 
it was distilled. A cultivated man, wise to know and 
bold to perform, is the end to which nature works, 
and the education of the will is the flowering and 
result of all this geology and astronomy. 

All successful men have agreed in one thing, — 
43 



44 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

they were causationists . They believed that things 
went not by luck, but by law ; that there was not a 
weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first 
and last of things. A belief in causality, or strict 
connection between every trifle and the principle of 
being, and, in consequence, belief in compensation, 
or, that nothing is got for nothing, — characterizes all 
valuable minds, and must control every effort that is 
made by an industrious one. The most valiant men 
are the best believers in the tension of the laws. 
" All the great captains," said Bonaparte, " have per- 
formed vast achievements by conforming with the 
rules of the art, — by adjusting efforts to obstacles." 

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the 
other, as the young orators describe ; — the key to all 
ages is — Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority 
of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but 
certain eminent moments ; victims of gravity, custom, 
and fear. This gives force to the strong, — that the 
multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original 
action. 

We must reckon success a constitutional trait. 
Courage, — the old physicians taught, (and their 
meaning holds, if their physiology is a little myth- 
ical,) — courage, or the degree of life, is as the degree 
of circulation of the blood in the arteries. " During 
passion, anger, fury, trials of strength, wrestling, fight- 
ing, a large amount of blood is collected in the arte- 
ries, the maintenance of bodily strength requiring it, 
and but little is sent into the veins. This condition 
is constant with intrepid persons." Where the arteries 
hold their blood, is courage and adventure possible. 



POWER. 45 

Where they pour it unrestrained into the veins, the 
spirit is low and feeble. For performance of great 
mark, it needs extraordinary health. If Eric is in ro- 
bust health, and has slept well, and is at the top of 
his condition, and thirty years old, at his departure 
from Greenland, he will steer west, and his ships will 
reach Newfoundland. But take out Eric, and put in 
.a stronger and bolder man, — Biorn, or Thorfin, — 
and the ships will, with just as much ease, sail six 
hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles further, 
and reach Labrador and New England. There is no 
chance in results. With adults, as with children, one 
class enter cordially into the game, and whirl with 
the whirling world ; the others have cold hands, and 
remain bystanders ; or are only dragged in by the 
humor and vivacity of those who can carry a dead 
weight. The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor- 
spirited, and cannot serve any one : it must husband 
its resources to live. But health or fulness answers 
its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inun- 
dates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's 
necessities. 

All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature 
of the world. The mind that is parallel with the 
laws of nature will be in the current of events, and 
strong with their strength. One man is made of the 
same stuff of which events are made ; is in sympathy 
with the course of things ; can predict it. Whatever 
befalls, befalls him first ; so that he is equal to what- 
ever shall happen. A man who knows men, can talk 
well on politics, trade, law, war, religion. For, every- 
where, men are led in the same manners. 



46 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

The advantage of a strong pulse is not to be sup- 
plied by any labor, art, or concert. It is like the 
climate, which easily rears a crop, which no glass, 
or irrigation, or tillage, or manures, can elsewhere 
rival. It is like the opportunity of a city like New 
York, or Constantinople, which needs no diplomacy 
to force capital or genius or labor to it. They come 
of themselves, as the waters flow to it. So a broad, 
healthy, massive understanding seems to lie on the 
shore of unseen rivers, of unseen oceans, which are 
covered with barks, that, night and day, are drifted 
to this point. That is poured into its lap, which 
other men lie plotting for. It is in everybody's se- 
cret ; anticipates everybody's discovery ; and if it do 
not command every fact of the genius and the scholar, 
it is because it is large and sluggish, and does not 
think them worth the exertion which you do. 

This affirmative force is in one, and is not in 
another, as one horse has the spring in him, and 
another in the whip. "On the neck of the young 
man," said Hafiz, " sparkles no gem so gracious as 
enterprise." Import into any stationary district, as 
into an old Dutch population in New York or Penn- 
sylvania, or among the planters of Virginia, a colony 
of hardy Yankees, with seething brains, heads full of 
steam-hammer, pulley, crank, and toothed wheel, — 
and everything begins to shine with values. What 
enhancement to all the water and land in England, is 
the arrival of James Watt or Brunei! In every com- 
pany, there is not only the active and passive sex, 
but, in both men and women, a deeper and more 
important sex of mind y namely, the inventive or crea- 



POWER, 47 

tive class of both men and women, and the uninven- 
tive or accepting class. Each phis man represents 
his set, and, if he have the accidental advantage of 
personal ascendency, — which implies neither more 
nor less of talent, but merely the temperamental or 
taming eye of a soldier or a schoolmaster, (which one 
has, and one has not, as one has a black moustache 
and one a blond,) then quite easily and without envy 
or resistance, all his coadjutors and feeders will admit 
his right to absorb them. The merchant works by 
book-keeper and cashier ; the lawyer's authorities are 
hunted up by clerks ; the geologist reports the sur- 
veys of his subalterns ; Commander Wilkes appropri- 
ates the results of all the naturalists attached to 
the Expedition ; Thorwaldsen's statue is finished by 
stone-cutters ; Dumas has journeymen ; and Shak- 
speare was theatre-manager, and used the labor of 
many young men, as well as the playbooks. 

There is always room for a man of force, and he 
makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers, 
and the best heads among them take the best places. 
A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and 
tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man 
sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes 
estates, as fast as the sun breeds clouds. 

When a new boy comes into school, when a man 
travels, and encounters strangers every day, or, when 
into any old club a new comer is domesticated, that 
happens which befalls, when a strange ox is driven 
into a pen or pasture where cattle are kept ; there is 
at once a trial of strength between the best pair of 
horns and the new comer, and it is settled thence- 



48 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

forth which is the leader. So now, there is a meas- 
uring of strength, very courteous, but decisive, and 
an acquiescence thenceforward when these two meet. 
Each reads his fate in the other's eyes. The weaker 
party finds that none of his information or wit quite 
fits the occasion. He thought he knew this or that : 
he finds that he omitted to learn the end of it. 
Nothing that he knows will quite hit the mark, whilst 
all the rival's arrows are good, and well thrown. But 
if he knew all the facts in the encyclopaedia, it would 
not help him : for this is an affair of presence of mind, 
of attitude, of aplomb : the opponent has the sun and 
wind, and, in every cast, the choice of weapon and 
mark ; and, when he himself is matched with some 
other antagonist, his own shafts fly well and hit. 
'Tis a question of stomach and constitution. The 
second man is as good as the first, — perhaps better ; 
but has not stoutness or stomach, as the first has, 
and so his wit seems over-fine or under-fine. 

Health is good, — power, life, that resists disease, 
poison, and all enemies, and is conservative, as 
well as creative. Here is question, every spring, 
whether to graft with wax, or whether with clay; 
whether to whitewash or to potash, or to prune ; but 
the one point is the thrifty tree. A good tree, that 
agrees with the soil, will grow in spite of blight, or 
bug, or pruning, or neglect, by night and by day, in 
all weathers and all treatments. Vivacity, leader- 
ship, must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice 
in choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty 
water, if clean cannot be had. If we will make bread, 
we must have contagion, yeast, emptyings, or what 



POWER. 49 

not, to induce fermentation into the dough: as the 
torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or 
by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine. 
And we have a certain instinct, that where is great 
amount of hfe, though gross and peccant, it has its 
own checks and purifications, and will be found at 
last in harmony with moral laws. 

We watch in children with pathetic interest, the 
degree in which they possess recuperative force. 
When they are hurt by us, or by each other, or go to 
the bottom of the class, or miss the annual prizes, 
or are beaten in the game, — if they lose heart, and 
remember the mischance in their chamber at home, 
they have a serious check. But if they have the 
buoyancy and resistance that preoccupies them with 
new interest in the new moment, — the wounds 
cicatrize, and the fibre is the tougher for the hurt. 

One comes to value this plus health, when he sees 
that all difficulties vanish before it. A timid man 
listening to the alarmists in Congress, and in the 
newspapers, and observing the profligacy of party, — 
sectional interests urged with a fury which shuts its 
eyes to consequences, with a mind made up to 
desperate extremities, ballot in one hand, and rifle 
in the other, — might easily believe that he and his 
country have seen their best days, and he hardens 
himself the best he can against the coming ruin. But, 
after this has been foretold with equal confidence 
fifty times, and government six per cents have not de- 
clined a quarter of a mill, he discovers that the enor- 
mous elements of strength which are here in play, 
make our politics unimportant. Personal power, 



50 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

freedom, and the resources of nature strain every 
faculty of every citizen. We prosper with such vigor, ^ 
that, hke thrifty trees, which grow in spite of ice, lice, 
mice, and borers, so we do not suffer from the protii- 
gate swarms that fatten on the national treasury. 
The huge animals nourish huge parasites, and the 
rancor of the disease attests the strength of the con- 
stitution. The same energy in the Greek Deinos 
drew the remark, that the evils of popular government 
appear greater than they are ; there is compensation 
for them in the spirit and energy it awakens. The 
rough and ready style which belongs to a people 
of sailors, foresters, farmers, and mechanics, has its 
advantages. Power educates the potentate. As long 
as our people quote English standards they dwarf 
their own proportions. A Western lawyer of emi- 
nence said to me he wished it were a penal of- 
fence to bring an English law-book into a court 
in this country, so pernicious had he found in his 
experience our deference to English precedent. The 
very word " commerce " has only an Enghsh meaning, 
and is pinched to the cramp exigencies of English 
experience. The commerce of rivers, the commerce 
of railroads, and who knows but the commerce of air- 
balloons, must add an American extension to the 
pond-hole of admiralty. As long as our people 
quote English standards, they will miss the sov- 
ereignty of power ; but let these rough riders, — 
legislators in shirt-sleeves, — Hoosier, Sucker, Wol- 
verine, Badger, — or whatever hard head Arkansas, 
Oregon, or Utah sends, half orator, half assassin, 
to represent its wrath and cupidity at Washington, — 



POWER, 51 

let these drive as they may; and the disposition 
of territories and public lands, the necessity of bal- 
ancing and keeping at bay the snarling majorities 
of German, Irish, and of native millions, will bestow 
promptness, address, and reason, at last, on our 
buffalo-hunter, and authority and majesty of manners. 
The instinct of the people is right. Men expect from 
good whigs, put into office by the respectability of the 
country, much less skill to deal with Mexico, Spain, 
Britain, or with our own malcontent members, than 
from some strong transgressor, like Jefferson, or 
Jackson, who first conquers his own government, and 
then uses the same genius to conquer the foreigner. 
The senators who dissented from Mr. Polk's Mexican 
war, were not those who knew better, but those who, 
from political position, could afford it ; not Webster, 
but Benton and Calhoun. 

This power, to be sure, is not clothed in satin. 
'Tis the power of Lynch law, of soldiers and pirates ; 
and it bullies the peaceable and loyal. But it brings 
its own antidote ; and here is my point, — that all 
kinds of power usually emerge at the same time ; good 
energy, and bad ; power of mind, with physical 
health ; the ecstasies of devotion, with the exaspera- 
tions of debauchery. The same elements are always 
present, only sometimes these conspicuous, and 
sometimes those ; what was yesterday foreground, 
being to-day background, — what was surface, 
playing now a not less effective part as basis. The 
longer the drought lasts, the more is the atmosphere 
surcharged with water. The faster the ball falls to the 
sun, the force to fly off is by so much augmented. 



52 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

And, in morals, wild liberty breeds iron conscience ; 
natures with great impulses have great resources, and 
return from far. In politics, the sons of democrats 
will be whigs ; whilst red republicanism, in the father, 
is a spasm of nature to engender an intolerable tyrant 
in the next age. On the other hand, conservatism, 
ever more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, 
and drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into 
radicaHsm. 

Those who have most of this coarse energy, — the 
" bruisers," who have run the gauntlet of caucus and 
tavern through the county or the state, have their 
own vices, but they have the good nature of strength 
and courage. Fierce and unscrupulous, they are 
usually frank and direct, and above falsehood. Our 
politics fall into bad hands, and churchmen and men 
of refinement, it seems agreed, are not fit persons to 
send to Congress. Politics is a deleterious profes- 
sion, like some poisonous handicrafts. Men in power 
have no opinions, but may be had cheap for any 
opinion, for any purpose, — and if it be only a ques- 
tion between the most civil and the most forcible, I 
lean to the last. These Hoosiers and Suckers are 
really better than the snivelling opposition. Their 
wrath is at least of a bold and manly cast. They see, 
against the unanimous declarations of the people, 
how much crime the people will bear ; they proceed 
from step to step, and they have calculated but too 
justly upon their Excellencies, the New England 
governors, and upon their Honors, the New England 
legislators. The messages of the governors and the 
resolutions of the legislatures, are a proverb for ex- 



POWER. 53 

pressing a sham virtuous indignation, which, in the 
course of events, is sure to be belied. 

In trade, also, this energy usually carries a trace of 
ferocity. Philanthropic and religious bodies do not 
commonly make their executive officers out of saints. 
The communities hitherto founded by Socialists, — 
the Jesuits, the Port-Royalists, the American com- 
munities at New Harmony, at Brook Farm, at Zoar, 
are only possible, by installing Judas as steward. 
The rest of the offices may be filled by good bur- 
gesses. The pious and charitable proprietor has a 
foreman not quite so pious and charitable. The 
most amiable of country gentlemen has a certain 
pleasure in the teeth of the bull-dog which guards his 
orchard. Of the Shaker society, it was formerly a 
sort of proverb in the country, that they always sent 
the devil to market. And in representations of the 
Deity, painting, poetry, and popular religion have 
ever drawn the wrath from Hell. It is an esoteric 
doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to 
make muscle; as if conscience were not good for 
hands and legs, as if poor decayed formalists of law 
and order cannot run like wild goats, wolves, and 
conies; that, as there is a use in medicine for 
poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues ; 
that public spirit and the ready hand are as well 
found among the malignants. 'Tis not very rare, 
the coincidence of sharp private and political prac- 
tice, with public spirit, and good neighborhood. 

I knew a burly Boniface who for many years kept a 
public-house in one of our rural capitals. He was 
a knave whom the town could ill spare. He was a 



54 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

social, vascular creature, grasping and selfish. There 
was no crime which he did not or could not commit. 
But he made good friends of the selectmen, served 
them with his best chop, when they supped at his 
house, and also with his honor the Judge, he was 
very cordial, grasping his hand. He introduced all 
the fiends, male and female, into the town, and 
united in his person the functions of bully, incen- 
diary, swindler, barkeeper, and burglar. He girdled 
the trees, and cut off the horses' tails of the temper- 
ance people, in the night. He led the "rummies" 
and radicals in town-meeting with a speech. Mean- 
time, he was civil, fat, and easy, in his house, and 
precisely the most public-spirited citizen. He was 
active in getting the roads repaired and planted 
with shade-trees ; he subscribed for the foun- 
tains, the gas, and the telegraph ; he introduced 
the new horse-rake, the new scraper, the baby-jumper, 
and what not, that Connecticut sends to the admiring 
citizens. He did this the easier, that the peddler 
stopped at his house, and paid his keeping, by setting 
up his new trap on the landlord's premises. 

Whilst thus the energy for originating and execut- 
ing work, deforms itself by excess, and so our axe 
chops off our own fingers, — this evil is not without 
remedy. All the elements whose aid man calls in, 
will sometimes become his masters, especially those 
of most subtle force. Shall he, then, renounce 
steam, fire, and electricity, or, shall he learn to deal 
with them ? The rule for this whole class of agen- 
cies is, — 2i[\pi?is is good ; only put it in the right place. 

Men of this surcharge of arterial blood cannot live 



POWER. 55 

on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies ; cannot read novels, 
and play whist ; cannot satisfy all their wants at the 
Thursday Lecture, or the Boston Athenaeum. They 
pine for adventure, and must go to Pike's Peak ; had 
rather die by the hatchet of a Pawnee, than sit all 
day and every day at a counting-room desk. They 
are made for war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, 
and clearing ; for hair-breadth adventures, huge risks, 
and the joy of eventful living. Some men cannot 
endure an hour of calm at sea. I remember a poor 
Malay cook, on board a Liverpool packet, who, when 
the wind blew a gale, could not contain his joy; 
" Blow ! " he cried, " me do tell you, blow ! '' Their 
friends and governors must see that some vent for 
their explosive complexion is provided. The roisters 
who are destined for infamy at home, if sent to 
Mexico, will " cover you with glory," and come back 
heroes and generals. There are Oregons, Califor- 
nias, and Exploring Expeditions enough appertain- 
ing to America, to find them in files to gnaw, and in 
crocodiles to eat. The young English are fine ani- 
mals, full of blood, and when they have no wars to 
breathe their riotous valors in, they seek for travels 
as dangerous as war, diving into Maelstroms ; swim- 
ming Hellesponts ; wading up the snowy Himmaleh ; 
hunting lion, rhinoceros, elephant, in South Africa; 
gypsying with Borrow in Spain and Algiers ; riding 
alligators in South America with Waterton ; utilizing 
Bedouin, Sheik, and Pacha, with Layard ; yachting 
among the icebergs of Lancaster Sound ; peeping 
into craters on the equator ; or running on the creases 
of Malays in Borneo. 



56 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

The excess of virility has the same importance in 
general history, as in private and industrial life. 
Strong race or strong individual rests at last on 
natural forces, which are best in the savage, who, like 
the beasts around him, is still in reception of the 
milk from the teats of Nature. Cut off the connec- 
tion between any of our works, and this aboriginal 
source, and the work is shallow. The people lean on 
this, and the mob is not quite so bad an argument as 
we sometimes say, for it has this good side. " March 
without the people," said a French deputy from the 
tribune, '' and you march into night : their instincts 
are a finger-pointing of Providence, always turned 
toward real benefit. But when you espouse an Or- 
leans party, or a Bourbon, or a Montalembert party, 
or any other but an organic party, though you mean 
well, you have a personality instead of a principle, 
which will inevitably drag you into a corner." 

The best anecdotes of this force are to be had from 
savage life, in explorers, soldiers, and buccaneers. 
But who cares for fallings-out of assassins, and fights 
of bears, or grindings of icebergs ? Physical force has 
no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow- 
banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The 
luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer 
days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our 
hearth : and of electricity, not volleys of the charged 
cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery- 
wires. So of spirit, or energy ; the rests or remains 
of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the 
cannibals in the Pacific. 

In history, the great moment is, when the savage is 



POWER. 57 

just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic 
strength directed on his opening sense of beauty : — 
and you have Pericles and Phidias, — not yet passed 
over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good 
in nature and the world is in that moment of transi- 
tion, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from 
nature, but their astringency or acridity is got out by 
ethics and humanity. 

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity 
to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the 
sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still 
visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, 
his • intellectual power culminated : the compression 
and tension of these stern conditions is a training for 
the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compen- 
sated in tranquil times, except by some analogous 
vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war. 

We say that success is constitutional ; depends on 
a plus condition of mind and body, on power of work, 
on courage ; that it is of main efficacy in carrying on 
the world, and, though rarely found in the right state 
for an article of commerce, but oftener in the super- 
saturate or excess, which makes it dangerous and 
destructive, yet it cannot be spared, and must be had 
in that form, and absorbents provided to take off its 
edge. 

The affirmative class monopolize the homage of 
mankind. They originate and execute all the great 
feats. What a force was coiled up in the skull of 
Napoleon! Of the sixty thousand men making his 
army at Eylau, it seems some thirty thousand were 
thieves and burglars. The men whom, in peaceful 



58 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

communities, we hold if we can, with iron at their 
legs, in prisons, under the muskets of sentinels, this 
man dealt with, hand to hand, dragged them to their 
duty, and won his victories by their bayonets. 

This aboriginal might gives a surprising pleasure 
when it appears under conditions of supreme refine- 
ment, as in the proficients in high art. When Michel 
Angelo was forced to paint the Sistine Chapel in 
fresco, of which art he knew nothing, he went down 
into the Pope's gardens behind the Vatican, and 
with a shovel dug out ochres, red and yellow, mixed 
them with glue and water with his own hands, and 
having, after many trials, at last suited himself, climbed 
his ladders, and painted away, week after week, month 
after month, the sibyls and prophets. He surpassed 
his successors in rough vigor, as much as in purity of 
intellect and refinement. He was not crushed by his 
one picture left unfinished at last. Michel was wont 
to draw his figures first in skeleton, then to clothe 
them with flesh, and lastly to drape them. "Ah!" 
said a brave painter to me, thinking on these things, 
" if a man has failed, you will find he has dreamed 
instead of working. There is no way to success in 
our art, but to take off your coat, grind paint, and 
work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every 
day." 

Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus 
or positive power: an ounce of power must balance 
an ounce of weight. And, though a man cannot 
return into his mother's womb, and be born with new 
amounts of vivacity, yet there are two economies, 
which are the best Sicccedanea which the case admits. 



POWER. 59 

The first is, the stopping off decisively our miscella- 
neous activity, and concentrating our force on one 
or a few points ; as the gardener, by severe pruning, 
forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous 
limbs, instead of suffering it to spindle into a sheaf 
of twigs. 

" Enlarge not thy destiny," said the oracle : " en- 
deavor not to do more than is given thee in charge." 
The one prudence in life is concentration ; the one 
evil is dissipation : and it makes no difference whether 
our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its 
cares, friends, and a social habit, or politics, or music, 
or feasting. Everything is good which takes away 
one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home 
to add one stroke of faithful work. Friends, books, 
pictures, lower duties, talents, flatteries, hopes, — all 
are distractions which cause oscillations in our giddy 
balloon, and make a good poise and a straight course 
impossible. You must elect your work ; you shall 
take what your brain can, and drop all the rest. 
Only so, can that amount of vital force accumulate, 
which can make the step from knowing to doing. 
No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man 
has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. 
'Tis a step out of a chalk circle of imbecility into 
fruitfulness. Many an artist lacking this, lacks all : 
he sees the masculine Angelo or Cellini with despair. 
He, too, is up to Nature and the First Cause in his 
thought. But the spasm to collect and swing his 
whole being into one act, he has not. The poet 
Campbell said, that " a man accustomed to work was 
equal to any achievement he resolved on, and, that. 



6o CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

for himself, necessity not inspiration was the prompter 
of his muse." 

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, 
in war, in trade, in short, in all management of human 
affairs. One of the high anecdotes of the world is 
the reply of Newton to the inquiry, " how he had 
been able to achieve his discoveries ? " — " By always 
intending my mind." Or if you will have a text 
from politics, take this from Plutarch : " There was, 
in the whole city, but one street in which Pericles 
was ever seen, the street which led to the market- 
place and the council house. He declined all invita- 
tions to banquets, and all gay assemblies and 
company. During the whole period of his administra- 
tion, he never dined at the table of a friend." Or if 
we seek an example from trade, — "I hope," said a 
good man to Rothschild, " your children are not too 
fond of money and business : I am sure you would 
not wish that." — "I am sure I should wish that: I 
wish them to give mind, soul, heart, and body to 
business, — that is the way to be happy. It requires 
a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution, 
to make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it 
requires ten times as much wit to keep it. If I were to 
listen to all the projects proposed to me, I should ruin 
myself very soon. Stick to one business, young man. 
Stick to your brewery, (he said this to young Bux- 
ton,) and you will be the great brewer of London. 
Be brewer, and banker, and merchant, and manufac- 
turer, and you will soon be in the Gazette." 

Many men are knowing, many are apprehensive 
and tenacious, but they do not rush to a decision. 



POWER, 6 1 

But in our flowing affairs a decision must be made, 
— the best, if you can ; but any is better than none. 
There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one 
is the shortest ; but set out at once on one. A man 
who has that presence of mind which can bring to 
him on the instant all he know^s, is worth for action 
a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring 
it to light slowly. The good Speaker in the House 
is not the man who knows the theory of parliamentary 
tactics, but the man who decides off-hand. The 
good judge is not he who does hair-splitting justice 
to every allegation, but who, aiming at substantial 
justice, rules something intelligible for the guidance 
of suitors. The good lawyer is not the man who 
has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, 
and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws 
himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you 
out of a scrape. Dr. Johnson said, in one of his 
flowing sentences, "Miserable beyond all names of 
wretchedness is that unhappy pair, who are doomed 
to reduce beforehand to the principles of abstract rea- 
son all the details of each domestic day. There are 
cases where little can be said, and much must be done." 
The second substitute for temperament is drill, the 
power of use and routine. The hack is a better 
roadster than the Arab barb. In chemistry, the gal- 
vanic stream, slow, but continuous, is equal in power 
to the electric spark, and is, in our arts, a better agent. 
So in human action, against the spasm of energy, we 
offset the continuity of drill. We spread the same 
amount of force over much time, instead of condens- 
ing it into a moment. 'Tis the same ounce of gold 



62 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

here in a ball, and there in a leaf. At West Point, 
Col. Buford, the chief engineer, pounded with a ham- 
mer on the tnmnions of a cannon, until he broke 
them off. He fired a piece of ordnance some hundred 
times in swift succession, until it burst. Now which 
stroke broke the trunnion? Every stroke. Which 
blast burst the piece? Every blast. ^^ Diligence passe 
sens,'^ Henry VIII. was wont to say, or, great is 
drill. John Kemble said, that the worst provincial 
company of actors would go through a play better 
than the best amateur company. Basil Hall likes to 
show that the worst regular troops will beat the best 
volunteers. Practice is nine tenths. A course of 
mobs is good practice for orators. All the great 
speakers were bad speakers at first. Stumping it 
through England for seven years, made Cobden a 
consummate debater. Stumping it through New 
England for twice seven, trained Wendell Phillips. 
The way to learn German, is, to read the same dozen 
pages over and over a hundred times, till you know 
every word and particle in them, and can pronounce 
and repeat them by heart. No genius can recite a bal- 
lad at first reading, so well as mediocrity can at the fif- 
teenth or twentieth reading. The rule for hospitality 
and Irish " help," is, to have the same dinner every 
day throughout the year. At last, Mrs. O'Shaughnessy 
learns to cook it to a nicety, the host learns to carve 
it, and the guests are well served. A humorous friend 
of mine thinks, that the reason why Nature is so per- 
fect in her art, and gets up such inconceivably fine 
sunsets, is, that she has learned how, at last, by dint 
of doing the same thing so very often. Cannot one 



POWER. 63 

converse better on a topic on which he has experience, 
than on one which is new? Men whose opinion is 
valued on 'Change, are only such as have a special 
experience, and off that ground their opinion is not 
valuable. " More are made good by exercitation, 
than by nature," said Democritus. The friction in 
nature is so enormous that we cannot spare any 
power. It is not question to express our thought, 
to elect our way, but to overcome resistances of the 
medium and material in everything we do. Hence 
the use of drill, and the worthlessness of amateurs to 
cope with practitioners. Six hours every day at the 
piano, only to give facility of touch ; six hours a day 
at painting, only to give command of the odious ma- 
terials, oil, ochres, and brushes. The masters say, 
that they know a master in music, only by seeing the 
pose of the hands on the keys ; — so difficult and vital 
an act is the command of the instrument. To have 
learned the use of the tools, by thousands of manipu- 
lations ; to have learned the arts of reckoning, by 
endless adding and dividing, is the power of the 
mechanic and the clerk. 

I remarked in England, in confirmation of a fre- 
quent experience at home, that, in literary circles, the 
men of trust and consideration, bookmakers, editors, 
university deans and professors, bishops, too, were by 
no means men of the largest literary talent, but usually 
of a low and ordinary intellectuality, with a sort of mer- 
cantile activity and working talent. Indifferent hacks 
and mediocrities tower, by pushing their forces to a 
lucrative point, or by working power, over multitudes 
of superior men, in Old as in New England. 



64 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

I have not forgotten that there are sublime consid- 
erations which limit the value of talent and superficial 
success. We can easily overpraise the vulgar hero. 
There are sources on which we have not drawn. I 
know what I abstain from. I adjourn what I have to 
say on this topic to the chapters on Culture and Wor- 
ship. But this force or spirit, being the means relied 
on by Nature for bringing the work of the day about, 
— as far as we attach importance to household life, 
and the prizes of the world, we must respect that. 
And I hold, that an economy may be applied to it ; 
it is as much a subject of exact law and arithmetic 
as fluids and gases are ; it may be husbanded, or 
wasted ; every man is efficient only as he is a con- 
tainer or vessel of this force, and never was any 
signal act or achievement in history, but by this ex- 
penditure. This is not gold, but the gold-maker ; not 
the fame, but the exploit. 

If these forces and this husbandry are within reach 
of our will, and the laws of them can be read, we 
infer that all success, and all conceivable benefit for 
man, is also, first or last, within his reach, and has its 
own sublime economies by which it may be attained. 
The world is mathematical, and has no casualty, in all 
its vast and flowing curve. Success has no more ec- 
centricity, than the gingham and muslin we weave in 
our mills. I know no more affecting lesson to our 
busy, plotting New England brains, than to go into 
one of the factories with which we have lined all the 
watercourses in the States. A man hardly knows 
how much he is a machine, until he begins to make 
telegraph, loom, press, and locomotive, in his own 



PO WER. 65 

image. But in these, he is forced to leave out his 
follies and hindrances, so that when we go to the mill, 
the machine is more moral than we. Let a man dare 
go to a loom, and see if he be equal to it. Let 
machine confront machine, and see how they come 
out. The world-mill is more complex than the calico- 
mill, and the architect stooped less. In the ging- 
ham-mill, a broken thread or a shred spoils the 
web through a piece of a hundred yards, and is traced 
back to the girl that wove it, and lessens her wages. 
The stockholder, on being shown this, rubs his hands 
with delight. Are you so cunning, Mr. Profitloss, 
and do you expect to swindle your master and em- 
ployer, in the web you weave? A day is a more 
magnificent cloth than any muslin, the mechanism 
that makes it is infinitely cunninger, and you shall 
not conceal the sleezy, fraudulent, rotten hours you 
have slipped into the piece, nor fear that any honest 
thread, or straighter steel, or more inflexible shaft, 
will not testify in the web. 



III. 

WEALTH. 



Who shall tell what did befall, 
Far away in time, when once, 
Over the lifeless ball, 
Hung idle stars and suns ? 
What god the element obeyed ? 
Wings of what wind the lichen bore, 
Wafting the puny seeds of power, 
Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade ? 
And well the primal pioneer 
Knew the strong task to it assigned 
Patient through Heaven's enormous year 
To build in matter home for mind. 
From air the creeping centuries drew 
The matted thicket low and wide, 
This must the leaves of ages strew 
The granite slab to clothe and hide, 
Ere wheat can wave its golden pride. 
What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled 
(In dizzy aeons dim and mute 
The reeling brain can ill compute) 
Copper and iron, lead, and gold ? 
What oldest star the fame can save 
Of races perishing to pave 
The planet with a floor of lime ? 
Dust is their pyramid and mole : 



68 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed 

Under the tumbling mountain's breast, 

In the safe herbal of the coal ? 

But when the quarried means were piled, 

All is waste and worthless, till 

Arrives the wise selecting will, 

And, out of slime and chaos, Wit 

Draws the threads of fair and fit. 

Then temples rose, and towns, and marts. 

The shop of toil, the hall of arts ; 

Then flew the sail across the seas 

To feed the North from tropic trees ; 

The storm-wind wore, the torrent span, 

Where they were bid the rivers ran ; 

New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream, 

Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. 

Then docks were built, and crops were stored. 

And ingots added to the hoard. 

But, though light-headed man forget. 

Remembering Matter pays her debt : 

Still, through her motes and masses, draw 

Electric thrills and ties of Law, 

Which bind the strengths of Nature wild 

To the conscience of a child. 



WEALTH. 

As soon as a stranger is introduced into any com- 
pany, one of the first questions which all wish to have 
answered, is, How does that man get his living? And 
with reason. He is no whole man until he knows how 
to earn a blameless livelihood. Society is barbarous, 
until every industrious man can get his living without 
dishonest customs. 

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a pro- 
ducer. He fails to make his place good in the world, 
unless he not only pays his debt, but also adds some- 
thing to the common wealth. Nor can he do justice to 
his genius, without making some larger demand on the 
world than a bare subsistence. He is by constitution 
expensive, and needs to be rich. 

Wealth has its source in applications of the mind 
to nature, from the rudest strokes of spade and axe, 
up to the last secrets of art. Intimate ties subsist be- 
tween thought and all production; because a better 
order is equivalent to vast amounts of brute labor. 
The forces and the resistances are Nature's, but the 
mind acts in bringing things from where they abound 
to where they are wanted ; in wise combining ; in 
directing the practice of the useful arts, and in the 
creation of finer values, by fine art, by eloquence, by 
song, or the reproductions of memory. Wealth is in 
applications of mind to nature ; and the art of getting 
69 



70 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but 
in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right 
spot. One man has stronger arms, or longer legs ; 
another sees by the course of streams, and growth of 
markets, where land will be wanted, makes a clearing 
to the river, goes to sleep, and wakes up rich. Steam 
is no stronger now, than it was a hundred years ago ; 
but is put to better use. A clever fellow was ac- 
quainted with the expansive force of steam ; he also 
saw the wealth of wheat and grass rotting in Michigan. 
Then he cunningly screws on the steam-pipe to the 
wheat-crop. Puff now, O Steam! The steam puffs 
and expands as before, but this time it is dragging all 
Michigan at its back to hungry New York and hungry 
England. Coal lay in ledges under the ground since 
the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass 
brings it to the surface. We may well call it black 
diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. 
For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of 
the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle : and it 
is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is 
wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear 
of mankind their secret, that a half -ounce of coal will 
draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and 
by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and 
with its comfort brings its industrial power. 

When the farmer's peaches are taken from under 
the tree, and carried into town, they have a new look, 
and a hundredfold value over the fruit which grew on 
the same bough, and lies fulsomely on the ground. 
The craft of the merchant is this bringing a thing from 
where it abounds, to where it is costly. 



WEALTH. 71 

Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and 
wind out ; in a good pump that yields you plenty of 
sweet water ; in two suits of clothes, so to change 
your dress when you are wet ; in dry sticks to burn ; 
in a good double-wick lamp ; and three meals ; in a 
horse, or a locomotive, to cross the land ; in a boat to 
cross the sea ; in tools to work with ; in books to read ; 
and so, in giving, on all sides, by tools and auxiliaries, 
the greatest possible extension to our powers, as if it 
added feet, and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to 
the day, and knowledge, and good-will. 

Wealth begins with these articles of necessity. 
And here we must recite the iron law which Nature 
thunders in these northern climates. First, she re- 
quires that each man should feed himself. If, happily, 
his fathers have left him no inheritance, he must go to 
work, and by making his wants less, or his gains more, 
he must draw himself out of that state of pain and in- 
sult in which she forces the beggar to He. She gives 
him no rest until this is done : she starves, taunts, and 
torments him, takes away warmth, laughter, sleep, 
friends, and daylight, until he has fought his way to 
his own loaf. Then, less peremptorily, but still with 
sting enough, she urges him to the acquisition of such 
things as belong to him. Every warehouse and shop- 
window, every fruit-tree, every thought of every hour, 
opens a new want to him, which it concerns his power 
and dignity to gratify. It is of no use to argue the 
wants down : the philosophers have laid the greatness 
of man in making his wants few ; but will a man con- 
tent himself with a hut and a handful of dried pease? 
He is born to be rich. He is thoroughly related ; and 



72 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

is tempted out by his appetites and fancies to the con- 
quest of this and that piece of nature, until he finds 
his well-being in the use of his planet, and of more 
planets than his own. Wealth requires, besides the 
crust of bread and the roof, — the freedom of the city, 
the freedom of the earth, travelling, machinery, the 
benefits of science, music, and fine arts, the best cul- 
ture, and the best company. He is the rich man who 
can avail himself of all men's faculties. He is the 
richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from 
the labors of the greatest number of men, of men in 
distant countries, and in past times. The same corre- 
spondence that is between thirst in the stomach, and 
water in the spring, exists between the whole of man 
and the whole of nature. The elements offer their 
service to him. The sea, washing the equator and 
the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and 
empire that follow it, — day by day to his craft and au- 
dacity. " Beware of me," it says, " but if you can hold 
me, I am the key to all the lands." Fire offers, on 
its side, an equal power. Fire, steam, lightning, grav- 
ity, ledges of rock, mines of iron, lead, quicksilver, tin, 
and gold ; forests of all woods ; fruits of all climates ; 
animals of all habits ; the powers of tillage ; the fabrics 
of his chemic laboratory ; the webs of his loom ; the 
masculine draught of his locomotive, the talismans of 
the machine-shop ; all grand and subtile things, min- 
erals, gases, ethers, passions, war, trade, government, are 
his natural playmates, and, according to the excellence 
of the machinery in each human being, is his attrac- 
tion for the instruments he is to employ. The world 
is his tool-chest, and he is successful, or his education 



WEALTH. 73 

is carried on just so far, as is the marriage of his facul- 
ties with nature, or, the degree in which he takes up 
things into himself. 

The strong race is strong on these terms. The 
Saxons are the merchants of the world ; now, for a 
thousand years, the leading race, and by nothing more 
than their quality of personal independence, and, in 
its special modification, pecuniary independence. 
No reliance for bread and games on the government, 
no clanship, no patriarchal style of living by the 
revenues of a chief, no marrying-on, — no system of 
clientship suits them ; but every man must pay his 
scot. The English are prosperous and peaceable, 
with their habit of considering that every man must 
take care of himself, and has himself to thank, if he 
do not maintain and improve his position in society. 

The subject of economy mixes itself with morals, 
inasmuch as it is a peremptory point of virtue that a 
man's independence be secured. Poverty demoralizes. 
A man in debt is so far a slave; and Wall-street 
thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his 
word, a man of honor, but, that, in failing circum- 
stances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity. 
And when one observes in the hotels and palaces of 
our Atlantic capitals, the habit of expense, the riot of 
the senses, the absence of bonds, clanship, fellow- 
feeling of any kind, he feels, that, when a man or a 
woman is driven to the wall, the chances of integrity 
are frightfully diminished, as if virtue were coming to 
be a luxury which few could afford, or, as Burke said, 
"at a market almost too high for humanity." He 
may fix his inventory of necessities and of enjoyments 



74 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

on what scale he pleases, but if he wishes the power 
and privilege of thought, the chalking out his own 
career, and having society on his own terms, he must 
bring his wants within his proper power to satisfy. 

The manly part is to do with might and main what 
you can do. The world is full of fops who never did 
anything, and who have persuaded beauties and men 
of genius to wear their fop livery, and these will 
deliver the fop opinion, that it is not respectable to be 
seen earning a living ; that it is much more respect- 
able to spend without earning ; and this doctrine of 
the snake will come also from the elect sons of light ; 
for wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak 
five times from their taste or their humor, to once 
from their reason. The brave workman, who might 
betray his feeling of it in his manners, if he do not 
succumb in his practice, must replace the grace or 
elegance forfeited, by the merit of the work done. 
No matter whether he make shoes, or statues, or laws. 
It is the privilege of any human work which is well 
done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. 
He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful 
work will answer for him. The mechanic at his 
bench carries a quiet heart and assured manners, and 
deals on even terms with men of any condition. The 
artist has made his picture so true, that it disconcerts 
criticism. The statue is so beautiful, that it contracts 
no stain from the market, but makes the market a 
silent gallery for itself. The case of the young law- 
yer was pitiful to disgust, — a paltry matter of buttons 
or tweezer-cases ; but the determined youth saw in it 
an aperture to insert his dangerous wedges, made the 



WEALTH. ^5 

insignificance of the thing forgotten, and gave fame 
by his sense and energy to the name and affairs of the 
Tittleton snuffbox factory. 

Society in large towns is babyish, and wealth is 
made a toy. The life of pleasure is so ostentatious, 
that a shallow observer must beheve that this is the 
agreed best use of wealth, and, whatever is pretended, 
it ends in cosseting. But, if this were the main use 
of surplus capital, it would bring us to barricades, 
burned towns, and tomahawks, presently. Men of 
sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature 
to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of 
the" planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their 
design. Power is what they want, — not candy; — 
power to execute their design, power to give legs and 
feet, form and actuality to their thought, which, to a 
clear-sighted man, appears the end for which the Uni- 
verse exists, and all its resources might be well ap- 
plied. Columbus thinks that the sphere is a problem 
for practical navigation, as well as for closet geometry, 
and looks on all kings and peoples as cowardly lands- 
men, until they dare fit him out. Few men on the 
planet have more truly belonged to it. But he was 
forced to leave much of his map blank. His suc- 
cessors inherited his map, and inherited his fury to 
complete it. 

So the men of the mine, telegraph, mill, map, and 
survey, — the monomaniacs, who talk up their project 
in marts, and offices, and entreat men to subscribe : — 
how did our factories get built ? how did North Amer- 
ica get netted with iron rails, except by the importu- 
nity of these orators, who dragged all the prudent men 



76 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

in ? Is party the madness of many for the gain of a 
few ? This speculative genius is the madness of few 
for the gain of the world. The projectors are sacri- 
ficed, but the public is the gainer. Each of these 
idealists, working after his thought, would make it 
tyrannical, if he could. He is met and antagonized 
by other speculators, as hot as he. The equilibrium 
is preserved by these counteractions, as one tree keeps 
down another in the forest, that it may not absorb all 
the sap in the ground. And the supply in nature of 
railroad presidents, copper-miners, grand-junctioners, 
smoke-burners, fire-annihilators, &c., is limited by the 
same law which keeps the proportion in the supply of 
carbon, of alum, and of hydrogen. 

To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the 
master-works and chief men of each race. It is to 
have the sea, by voyaging ; to visit the mountains, 
Niagara, the Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, Constanti- 
nople; to see galleries, libraries, arsenals, manufac- 
tories. The reader of Humboldt's " Cosmos " follows 
the marches of a man whose eyes, ears, and mind are 
armed by all the science, arts, and implements which 
mankind have anywhere accumulated, and who is 
using these to add to the stock. So is it with Denon, 
Beckford, Belzoni, Wilkinson, Layard, Kane, Lepsius, 
and Livingston. " The rich man," says Saadi, " is 
everywhere expected and at home." The rich take 
up something more of the world into man's life. 
They include the country as well as the town, the 
ocean-side, the White Hills, the Far West, and the 
old European homesteads of man, in their notion of 
available material. The world is his, who has money 



WEALTH. 77 

to go over it. He arrives at the sea-shore, and a 
sumptuous ship has floored and carpeted for him the 
stormy Atlantic, and made it a luxurious hotel, amid 
the horrors of tempests. The Persians say, " 'Tis the 
same to him who wears a shoe, as if the whole earth 
were covered with leather." 

Kings are said to have long arms, but every man 
should have long arms, and should pluck his living, 
his instruments, his power, and his knowing, from the 
sun, moon, and stars. Is not then the demand to be 
rich legitimate ? Yet, I have never seen a rich man. 
I have never seen a man as rich as all men ought to 
be, 'or, with an adequate command of nature. The 
pulpit and the press have many commonplaces 
denouncing the thirst for wealth ; but if men should 
take these moralists at their word, and leave off aim- 
ing to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at 
all hazards this love of power in the people, lest 
civilization should be undone. Men are urged by their 
ideas to acquire the command over nature. Ages 
derive a culture from the wealth of Roman Caesars, 
Leo Tenths, magnificent Kings of France, Grand 
Dukes of Tuscany, Dukes of Devonshire, Townleys, 
Vernons, and Peels, in England ; or whatever great 
proprietors. It is the interest of all men, that there 
should be Vaticans and Louvres full of noble works 
of art ; British Museums, and French Gardens of 
Plants, Philadelphia Academies of Natural History, 
Bodleian, Ambrosian, Royal, Congressional Libraries. 
It is the interest of all that there should be Exploring 
Expeditions ; Captain Cooks to voyage round the 
world, Rosses, Franklins, Richardsons, and Kanes, to 



78 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

find the magnetic and the geographic poles. We are 
all richer for the measurement of a degree of latitude 
on the earth's surface. Our navigation is safer for the 
chart. How intimately our knowledge of the system 
of the Universe rests on that ! — and a true economy 
in a state or an individual will forget its frugality in 
behalf of claims like these. 

Whilst it is each man's interest, that, not only ease 
and convenience of living, but also wealth or surplus 
product should exist somewhere, it need not be in his 
hands. Often it is very undesirable to him. Goethe 
said well, " nobody should be rich but those who 
understand it." Some men are born to own, and can 
animate all their possessions. Others cannot : their 
owning is not graceful ; seems to be a compromise of 
their character : they seem to steal their own dividends. 
They should own who can administer ; not they who 
hoard and conceal ; not they who, the greater pro- 
prietors they are, are only the greater beggars, but 
they whose work carves out work for more, opens a 
path for all. For he is the rich man in whom the 
people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom 
the people are poor : and how to give all access to the 
masterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of 
civilization. The socialism of our day has done good 
service in setting men on thinking how certain civiliz- 
ing benefits, now only enjoyed by the opulent, can be 
enjoyed by all. For example, the providing to each 
man the means and apparatus of science, and of the 
arts. There are many articles good for occasional 
use, which few men are able to own. Every man 
wishes to see the ring of Saturn, the satellites and 



WEALTH, 79 

belts of Jupiter and Mars ; the mountains and craters 
in the moon : yet how few can buy a telescope ! and 
of those, scarcely one would like the trouble of keep- 
ing it in order, and exhibiting it. So of electrical and 
chemical apparatus, and many the like things. Every 
man may have occasion to consult books which he 
does not care to possess, such as cyclopedias, diction- 
aries, tables, charts, maps, and public documents : 
pictures also of birds, beasts, fishes, shells, trees, 
flowers, whose names he desires to know. 

There is a refining influence from the arts of Design 
on a prepared mind, which is as positive as that of 
music, and not to be supplied from any other source. 
But pictures, engravings, statues, and casts, beside 
their first cost, entail expenses, as of galleries and 
keepers for the exhibition ; and the use which any 
man can make of them is rare, and their value, too, 
is much enhanced by the numbers of men who can 
share their enjoyment. In the Greek cities, it was 
reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a 
property in a work of art, which belonged to all who 
could behold it. I think sometimes, — could I only 
have music on my own terms ; — could I live in a 
great city, and know where I could go whenever I 
wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, 
— that were a bath and a medicine. 

If properties of this kind were owned by states, 
towns, and lyceums, they would draw the bonds of 
neighborhood closer. A town would exist to an 
intellectual purpose. In Europe, where the feudal 
forms secure the permanence of wealth in certain 
families, those families buy and preserve these things, 



80 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

and lay them open to the pubHc. But in America, 
where democratic institutions divide every estate into 
small portions, after a few years, the public should 
step into the place of these proprietors, and provide 
this culture and inspiration for the citizen. 

Man was born to be rich, or, inevitably grows rich 
by the use of his faculties ; by the union of thought 
with nature. Property is an intellectual production. 
The game requires coolness, right reasoning, prompt- 
ness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labor 
drives out brute labor. An infinite number of shrewd 
men, in infinite years, have arrived at certain best and 
shortest ways of doing, and this accumulated skill in 
arts, cultures, harvestings, curings, manufactures, navi- 
gations, exchanges, constitutes the worth of our world 
to-day. 

Commerce is a game of skill, which every man 
cannot play, which few men can play well. The right 
merchant is one who has the just average of faculties 
we call common sense ; a man of a strong affinity for 
facts, who makes up his decision on what he has 
seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of 
arithmetic. There is always a reason, m the man^ for 
his good or bad fortune, and so, in making money. 
Men talk as if there were some magic about this, and 
believe in magic, in all parts of life. He knows, that 
all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for 
cent, — for every effect a perfect cause, — and that 
good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose. 
He insures himself in every transaction, and likes 
small and sure gains. Probity and closeness to the 
facts are the basis, but the masters of the art add a 



WEALTH. 81 

certain long arithmetic. The problem is, to combine 
many and remote operations, with the accuracy and 
adherence to the facts, which is easy in near and small 
transactions ; so to arrive at gigantic results, without 
any compromise of safety. Napoleon was fond of 
telling the story of the Marseilles banker, who said to 
his visitor, surprised at the contrast between the 
splendor of the banker's chateau and hospitality, and 
the meanness of the counting-room in which he had 
seen him, — " Young man, you are too young to un- 
derstand how masses are formed, — the true and only 
power, — whether composed of money, water, or 
men, it is all alike, — a mass is an immense centre of 
motion, but it must be begun, it must be kept up : " 
• — and he might have added, that the way in which 
it must be begun and kept up, is, by obedience to the 
law of particles. 

Success consists in close appliance to the laws of 
the world, and, since those laws are intellectual and 
moral, an intellectual and moral obedience. Politi- 
cal Economy is as good a book wherein to read the 
life of man, and the ascendency of laws over all private 
and hostile influences, as any Bible which has come 
down to us. 

Money is representative, and follows the nature 
and fortunes of the owner. The coin is a delicate 
meter of civil, social, and moral changes. The farmer 
is covetous of his dollar, and with reason. It is no 
waif to him. He knows how many strokes of labor 
it represents. His bones ache with the day's work 
that earned it. He knows how much land it repre- 
sents ; — how much rain, frost, and sunshine. He 



82 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

knows that, in the dollar, he gives you so much dis- 
cretion and patience, so much hoeing, and threshing. 
Try to lift his dollar ; you must lift all that weight. 
In the city, where money follows the skit of a pen, 
or a lucky rise in exchange, it comes to be looked on 
as light. I wish the farmer held it dearer, and would 
spend it only for real bread ; force for force. 

The farmer's dollar is heavy, and the clerk's is 
light and nimble ; leaps out of his pocket ; jumps on 
to cards and faro-tables : but still more curious is its 
susceptibility to metaphysical changes. It is the 
finest barometer of social storms, and announces 
revolutions. 

Every step of civil advancement makes every man's 
dollar worth more. In California, the country where 
it grew, — what would it buy? A few years since, it 
would buy a shanty, dysentery, hunger, bad company, 
and crime. There are wide countries, like Siberia, 
where it would buy little else to-day, than some petty 
mitigation of suffering. In Rome, it will buy beauty 
and magnificence. Forty years ago, a dollar would 
not buy much in Boston. Now it will buy a great 
deal more in our old town, thapks to railroads, tele- 
graphs, steamers, and the contemporaneous growth 
of New York, and the whole country. Yet there are 
many goods appertaining to a capital city, which are 
not yet purchasable here, no, not with a mountain of 
dollars. A dollar in Florida is not worth a dollar in 
Massachusetts. A dollar is not value, but representa- 
tive of value, and^ at last, of moral values. A dollar 
is rated for the corn it will buy, or to speak strictly, 
not for the corn or house-room, but for Athenian 



WEALTH, Zl 

corn, and Roman house-room, — for the wit, probity, 
and power, which we eat bread and dwell in houses to 
share and exert. Wealth is mental; wealth is moral. 
The value of a dollar is, to buy just things : a dollar 
goes on increasing in value with all the genius, and all 
the virtue of the world. A dollar in a university, is 
worth more than a dollar in a jail ; in a temperate, 
schooled, law-abiding community, than in some sink 
of crime, where dice, knives, and arsenic, are in con- 
stant play. 

The ''Bank-Note Detector" is a useful publication. 
But the current dollar, silver or paper, is itself the 
detector of the right and wrong where it circulates. 
Is it not instantly enhanced by the increase of equity ? 
If a trader refuses to sell his vote, or adheres to some 
odious right, he makes so much more equity in Massa- 
chusetts ; and every acre in the State is more worth, 
in the hour of his action. If you take out of State- 
street the ten honestest merchants, and put in ten 
roguish persons, controlling the same amount of 
capital, — the rates of insurance will indicate it ; the 
soundness of banks will show it : the highways will 
be less secure : the schools will feel it ; the children 
will bring home their little dose of the poison : the 
judge will sit less firmly on the bench, and his deci- 
sions be less upright ; he has lost so much support 
and constraint, — which all need ; and the pulpit will 
betray it, in a laxer rule of life. An apple-tree, if 
you take out every day for a number of days, a load 
of loam, and put in a load of sand about its roots, — 
will find it out. An apple-tree is a stupid kind of 
creature, but if this treatment be pursued for a short 



84 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

time, I think it would begin to mistrust something. 
And if you should take out of the powerful class en- 
gaged in trade a hundred good men, and put in a 
hundred bad, or, what is just the same thing, intro- 
duce a demoralizing institution, would not the dollar, 
which is not much stupider than an apple-tree, pres- 
ently find it out? The value of a dollar is social, as 
it is created by society. Every man who removes 
into this city, with any purchasable talent or skill in 
him, gives to every man's labor in the city, a new 
worth. If a talent is anywhere born into the world, 
the community of nations is enriched; and, much 
more, with a new degree of probity. The expense of 
crime, one of the principal charges of every nation, is 
so far stopped. In Europe, crime is observed to in- 
crease or abate with the price of bread. If the Roths- 
childs at Paris do not accept bills, the people at 
Manchester, at Paisley, at Birmingham, are forced 
into the highway, and landlords are shot down in 
Ireland. The police records attest it. The vibra- 
tions are presently felt in New York, New Orleans, 
and Chicago. Not much otherwise, the economical 
power touches the masses through the political lords. 
Rothschild refuses the Russian loan, and there is 
peace, and the harvests are saved. He takes it, and 
there is war, and an agitation through a large portion 
of mankind, with every hideous result, ending in 
revolution, and a new order. 

Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. 
The basis of political economy is non-interference. 
The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter 
of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, 



WEALTH, 85 

and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws. 
Give no bounties : make equal laws : secure life and 
property, and you need not give alms. Open the 
doors of opportunity to talent and virtue, and they 
will do themselves justice, and property will not be in 
bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, prop- 
erty rushes from the idle and imbecile, to the indus- 
trious, brave, and persevering. 

The laws of nature play through trade, as a toy- 
battery exhibits the effects of electricity. The level 
of the sea is not more surely kept, than is the 
equilibrium of value in society, by the demand and 
supply : and artifice or legislation punishes itself, by 
reactions, gluts, and bankruptcies. The sublime 
laws play indifferently through atoms and galaxies. 
Whoever knows what happens in the getting and 
spending of a loaf of bread and a pint of beer ; that 
no wishing will change the rigorous limits of pints 
and penny loaves ; that, for all that is consumed, so 
much less remains in the basket and pot ; but what is 
gone out of these is not wasted, but well spent, if it 
nourish his body, and enable him to finish his task ; — 
knows all of political economy that the budgets of 
empires can teach him. The interest of petty economy 
is this symbolization of the great economy ; the way 
in which a house, and a private man's methods, tally 
with the solar system, and the laws of give and take, 
throughout nature ; and, however wary we are of the 
falsehoods and petty tricks which we suicidally play 
off on each other, every man has a certain satisfaction, 
whenever his dealing touches on the inevitable facts ; 
when he sees that things themselves dictate the price, 



86 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

as they always tend to do, and, in large manufactures, 
are seen to do. Your paper is not fine or coarse 
enough, — is too heavy, or too thin. The manufac- 
turer says, he will furnish you with just that thick- 
ness or thinness you want; the pattern is quite 
indifferent to him ; here is his schedule ; — any 
variety of paper, as cheaper or dearer, with the prices 
annexed. A pound of paper costs so much, and you 
may have it made up in any pattern you fancy. 

There is in all our dealings a self-regulation that 
supersedes chaffering. You will rent a house, but 
must have it cheap. The owner can reduce the rent, 
but so he incapacitates himself from making proper 
repairs, and the tenant gets not the house he would 
have, but a worse one ; besides, that a relation a 
little injurious is established between landlord and 
tenant. You dismiss your laborer, saying, "Patrick, 
I shall send for you as soon as I cannot do without 
you." Patrick goes off contented, for he knows that 
the weeds will grow with the potatoes, the vines 
must be planted, next week, and, however unwilling 
you may be, the cantelopes, crook-necks, and cucum- 
bers will send for him. Who but must wish that all 
labor and value should stand on the same simple and 
surly market? If it is the best of its kind, it will. 
We must have joiner, locksmith, planter, priest, poet, 
doctor, cook, weaver, ostler; each in turn, through 
the year. 

If a St. Michael's pear sells for a shilling, it costs 
a shilling to raise it. If, in Boston, the best securi- 
ties offer twelve per cent, for money, they have just 
six per cent, of insecurity. You may not see that 



WEALTH. 87 

the fine pear costs you a shilling, but it costs the 
community so much. The shilling represents the 
number of enemies the pear has, and the amount of 
risk in ripening it. The price of coal shows the 
narrowness of the coal-field, and a compulsory con- 
finement of the miners to a certain district. All 
salaries are reckoned on contingent, as well as on 
actual services. " If the wind were always south- 
west by west," said the skipper, '-* women might take 
ships to sea." One might say, that all things are of 
one price; that nothing is cheap or dear; and that 
the apparent disparities that strike us, are only a 
shopman's trick of concealing the damage in your 
bargain. A youth coming into the city from his 
native New Hampshire farm, with its hard fare still 
fresh in his remembrance, boards at a first-class hotel, 
and believes he must somehow have outwitted Dr. 
Franklin and Malthus, for luxuries are cheap. But 
he pays for the one convenience of a better dinner, 
by the loss of some of the richest social and educa- 
tional advantages. He has lost what guards! what 
incentives! He will perhaps find by and by, that 
he left the Muses at the door of the hotel, and found 
the Furies inside. Money often costs too much, and 
power and pleasure are not cheap. The ancient poet 
said, " the gods sell all things at a fair price." 

There is an example of the compensations in the 
commercial history of this country. When the 
European wars threw the carrying-trade of the world, 
from 1800 to 181 2, into American bottoms, a seizure 
was now and then made of an American ship. Of 
course, the loss was serious to the owner, but the 



88 . CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

country was indemnified ; for we charged threepence 
a pound for carrying cotton, sixpence for tobacco, 
and so on ; which paid for the risk and loss, and 
brought into the country an immense prosperity, 
early marriages, private wealth, the building of cit- 
ies, and of states : and, after the war was over, we 
received compensation over and above, by treaty, 
for all the seizures. Well, the Americans grew rich 
and great. But the pay-day comes round. Britain, 
France, and Germany, which our extraordinary prof- 
its had impoverished, send out, attracted by the fame 
of our advantages, first their thousands, then their 
millions, of poor people, to share the crop. At first, 
we employ them, and increase our prosperity: but, 
in the artificial system of society and of protected 
labor, which we also have adopted and enlarged, 
there come presently checks and stoppages. Then 
we refuse to employ these poor men. But they will 
not so be answered. They go into the poor rates, 
and, though we refuse wages, we must now pay the 
same amount in the form of taxes. Again, it turns 
out that the largest proportion of crimes are com- 
mitted by foreigners. The cost of the crime, and the 
expense of courts, and of prisons, we must bear, and 
the standing army of preventive police we must pay. 
The cost of education of the posterity of this great 
colony, I will not compute. But the gross amount 
of these costs will begin to pay back what we thought 
was a net gain from our transatlantic customers of 
iSoo. It is vain to refuse this payment. We cannot 
get rid of these people, and we cannot get rid of their 
will to be supported. That has become an inevitable 



WEALTH, 89 

element of our politics ; and, for their votes, each of 
the dominant parties courts and assists them to get 
it executed. Moreover, vire have to pay, not what 
would have contented them at home, but what they 
have learned to think necessary here; so that 
opinion, fancy, and all manner of moral considera- 
tions complicate the problem. 

There are a few measures of economy which will 
bear to be named without disgust ; for the subject is 
tender, and we may easily have too much of it ; and 
• therein resembles the hideous animalcules of which 
our bodies are built up, — which, offensive in the 
particular, yet compose valuable and effective masses. 
Our nature and genius force us to respect ends, 
whilst we use means. We must use the means, and 
yet, in our most accurate using, somehow screen and 
cloak them, as we can only give them any beauty, by 
a reflection of the glory of the end. That is the 
good head, which serves the end, and commands the 
means. The rabble are corrupted by their means : 
the means are too strong for them, and they desert 
their end. 

I. The first of these measures is that each man's 
expense must proceed from his character. As long 
as your genius buys, the investment is safe, though 
you spend like a monarch. Nature arms each man 
with some faculty which enables him to do easily 
some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes 
him necessary to society. This native determination 
guides his labor and his spending. He wants an 
equipment of means and tools proper to his talent. 



90 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

And to save on this point, were to neutralize the 
special strength and helpfulness of each mind. Do 
your work, respecting the excellence of the work, and 
not its acceptableness. This is so much economy, 
that, rightly read, it is the sum of economy. Prof- 
ligacy consists not in spending years of time or 
chests of money, — but in spending them off the line 
of your career. The crime which bankrupts men and 
states, is, job-work ; — declining from your main 
design, to serve a turn here or there. Nothing is 
beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life : 
nothing is great or desirable, if it is off from that. I 
think we are entitled here to draw a straight line, and 
say, that society can never prosper, but must always 
be bankrupt, until every man does that which he was 
created to do. 

Spend for your expense, and retrench the expense 
which is not yours. Allston, the painter, was wont to 
say, that he built a plain house, and filled it with 
plain furniture, because he would hold out no bribe to 
any to visit him, who had not similar tastes to his 
own. We are sympathetic, and, like children, want 
everything we see. But it is a large stride to in- 
dependence, — when a man, in the discovery of his 
proper talent, has sunk the necessity for false ex- 
penses. As the betrothed maiden, by one secure 
affection, is relieved from a system of slaveries, — the 
daily inculcated necessity of pleasing all, — so the 
man who has found what he can do, can spend on 
that, and leave all other spending. Montaigne said, 
" When he was a younger brother, he went brave in 
dress and equipage, but afterward his chateau and 



WEALTH. 91 

farms might answer for him." Let a man who 
belongs to the class of nobles, those, namely, who 
have found out that they can do something, relieve 
himself of all vague squandering on objects not his. 
Let the realist not mind appearances. Let him dele- 
gate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of 
social life. The virtues are economists, but some of 
the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have 
noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good 
pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to 
fifteen hundred a year. Pride is handsome, economi- 
cal : pride eradicates so many vices, letting none sub- 
sist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain 
to exchange vanity for pride. Pride can go without 
domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house 
with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed 
corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk 
with poor men, or sit silent well-contented in fine 
saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, 
women, health, and peace, and is still nothing at last, 
a long way leading nowhere. — Only one drawback ; 
proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are 
gentle and giving. 

Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a 
genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or 
philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill pro- 
vider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter 
himself with duties which will embitter his days, and 
spoil him for his proper work. We had in this 
region, twenty years ago, among our educated men, a 
sort of Arcadian fanaticism, a passionate desire to go 
upon the land, and unite farming to intellectual pur- 



92 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

suits. Many effected their purpose, and made the 
experiment, and some became downright ploughmen ; 
but all were cured of their faith that scholarship and 
practical farming, (I mean, with one's own hands,) 
could be united. 

With brow bent, with firm intent, the pale scholar 
leaves his desk to draw a freer breath, and get a 
juster statement of his thought, in the garden-walk. 
He stoops to pull up a purslain, or a dock, that is 
choking the young com, and finds there are two : 
close behind the last, is a third ; he reaches out his 
hand to a fourth ; behind that, are four thousand and 
one. He is heated and untuned, and, by and by, 
wakes up from his idiot dream of chickweed and red- 
root, to remember his morning thought, and to find, 
that, with his adamantine purposes, he has been 
duped by a dandelion. A garden is like those per- 
nicious machineries we read of, every month, in the 
newspapers, which catch a man's coat-skirt or his 
hand, and draw in his arm, his leg, and his whole 
body to irresistible destruction. In an evil hour 
he pulled down his wall, and added a field to his 
homestead. No land is bad, but land is worse. If a 
man own land, the land owns him. Now let him 
leave home, if he dare. Every tree and graft, every 
hill of melons, row of corn, or quickset hedge, all 
he has done, and all he means to do, stand in his 
way, like duns, when he would go out of his gate. 
The devotion to these vines and trees he finds 
poisonous. Long free walks, a circuit of miles, free 
his brain, and serve his body. Long marches are 
no hardship to him. He believes he composes easily 



WEALTH. 



93 



on the hills. But this pottering in a few square yards 
of garden is dispiriting and drivelling. The smell of 
the plants has drugged him, and robbed him of 
energy. He finds a catalepsy in his bones. He 
grows peevish and poor-spirited. The genius of 
reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resin- 
ous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative 
in sparks and shocks : the other is diffuse strength ; 
so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's 
duties. 

An engraver whose hands must be of an exquisite 
delicacy of stroke, should not lay stone walls. Sir 
David Brewster gives exact instructions for micro- 
scopic observation : — " Lie down on your back, and 
hold the single lens and object over your eye," &c. 
&c. How much more the seeker of abstract truth, 
who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentra- 
tion, and almost a going out of the body to think! 

2. Spend after your genius, and by system. Na- 
ture goes by rule, not by sallies and saltations. 
There must be system in the economies. Saving 
and unexpensiveness will not keep the most pathetic 
family from ruin, nor will bigger incomes make free 
spending safe. The secret of success lies never in 
the amount of money, but in the relation of income 
to outgo ; as if, after expense has been fixed at a 
certain point, then new and steady rills of income, 
though never so small, being added, wealth begins. 
But in ordinary, as means increase, spending in- 
creases faster, so that, large incomes, in England and 
elsewhere, are found not to help matters ; — the eat- 
ing quality of debt does not relax its voracity. When 



94 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

the cholera is in the potato, what is the use of plant- 
ing larger crops? In England, the richest country in 
the universe, I was assured by shrewd observers, that 
great lords and ladies had no more guineas to give 
away than other people ; that liberality with money 
is as rare, and as immediately famous a virtue as it is 
here. Want is a growing giant whom the coat of 
Have was never large enough to cover. I remember 
in Warwickshire, to have been shown a fair manor, 
still in the same name as in Shakspeare^s time. The 
rent-roll, I was told, is some fourteen thousand pounds 
a year : but, when the second son of the late propri- 
etor was born, the father was perplexed how to pro- 
vide for him. The eldest son must inherit the manor ; 
what to do with this supernumerary? He was advised 
to breed him for the Church, and to settle him in the 
rectorship, which was in the gift of the family ; which 
was done. It is a general rule in that country, that 
bigger incomes do not help anybody. It is commonly 
observed, that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in 
a lottery, or a large bequest to a poor family, does 
not permanently enrich. They have served no ap- 
prenticeship to wealth, and, with the rapid wealth, 
come rapid claims : which they do not know how to 
deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated. 

A system must be in every economy, or the best 
single expedients are of no avail. A farm is a good 
thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does 
not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out. Thus, the 
cattle are a main link in the chain-ring. If the non- 
conformist or aesthetic farmer leaves out the cattle, 
and does not also leave out the want which the cat- 



WEALTH. 95 

tie must supply, he must fill the gap by begging or 
stealing. When men now alive were born, the farm 
yielded everything that was consumed on it. The 
farm yielded no money, and the farmer got on with- 
out. If he fell sick, his neighbors came in to his aid : 
each gave a day's work ; or a half day ; or lent his 
yoke of oxen, or his horse, and kept his work even : 
hoed his potatoes, mowed his hay, reaped his rye ; 
well knowing that no man could aiford to hire labor, 
without selling his land. In autumn, a farmer could 
sell an ox or a hog, and get a little money to pay 
taxes withal. Now, the farmer buys almost all he 
consumes, — tin-ware, cloth, sugar, tea, coffee, fish, 
coal, railroad -tickets, and newspapers. 

A master in each art is required, because the prac- 
tice is never with still or dead subjects, but they 
change in your hands. You think farm-buildings and 
broad acres a solid property : but its value is flowing 
like water. It requires as much watching as if you 
were decanting wine from a cask. The farmer knows 
what to do with it, stops every leak, turns all the 
streamlets to one reservoir, and decants wine : but a 
blunderhead comes out of Cornhill, tries his hand, 
and it all leaks away. So is it with granite streets, 
or timber townships, as with fruit or flowers. Nor is 
any investment so permanent, that it can be allowed 
to remain without incessant watching, as the history 
of each attempt to lock up an inheritance through 
two generations for an unborn inheritor may show. 

When Mr. Cockayne takes a cottage in the coun- 
try, and will keep his cow, he thinks a cow is a crea- 
ture that is fed on hay, and gives a pail of milk twice 



g6 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

a day. But the cow that he buys gives milk for three 
months ; then her bag dries up. What to do with a 
dry cow? who will buy her? Perhaps he bought 
also a yoke of oxen to do his work ; but they get 
blown and lame. What to do with blown and lame 
oxen ? The farmer fats his, after the spring-work is 
done, and kills them in the fall. But how can Cock- 
ayne, who has no pastures, and leaves his cottage 
daily in the cars, at business hours, be pothered with 
fatting and killing oxen? He plants trees ; but there 
must be crops, to keep the trees in ploughed land. 
What shall be the crops? He will have nothing to 
do with trees, but will have grass. After a year or 
two, the grass must be turned up and ploughed : now 
what crops ? Credulous Cockayne ! 

3. Help comes in the custom of the country, and 
the rule of Impera pareiido. The rule is not to dic- 
tate, nor to insist on carrying out each of your 
schemes by ignorant wilfulness, but to learn practi- 
cally the secret spoken from all nature, that things 
themselves refuse to be mismanaged, and will show 
to the watchful their own law. Nobody need stir 
hand or foot. The custom of the country will do 
it all. I know not how to build or to plant ; neither 
how to buy wood, nor what to do with the house-lot, 
the field, or the wood-lot, when bought. Never fear : 
it is all settled how it shall be, long beforehand, in 
the custom of the country, whether to sand, or whether 
to clay it, when to plough, and how to dress, whether 
to grass, or to corn ; and you cannot help or hinder 
it. Nature has her own best mode of doing each 
thing, and she has somewhere told it plainly, if we 



WEALTH. 97 

will keep our eyes and ears open. If not, she will 
not be slow in undeceiving us, when we prefer our 
own way to hers. How often we must remember the 
art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken 
bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from 
false position ; they fly into place by the action of 
the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts rely. 

Of the two eminent engineers in the recent con- 
stmction of railways in England, Mr. Brunei went 
straight from terminus to terminus, through moun- 
tains, over streams, crossing highways, cutting ducal 
estates in two, and shooting through this man's cel- 
lar, and that man's attic window, and so arriving at 
his end, at great pleasure to geometers, but with cost 
to his company. Mr. Stephenson, on the contrary, 
believing that the river knows the way, followed 
his valley, as implicitly as our Western Railroad fol- 
lows the Westfield River, and turned out to be the 
safest and cheapest engineer. We say the cows laid 
out Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors. 
Every pedestrian in our pastures has frequent occa- 
sion to thank the cows for cutting the best path 
through the thicket, and over the hills : and travel- 
lers and Indians know the value of a buffalo-trail, 
which is sure to be the easiest possible pass through 
the ridge. 

When a citizen, fresh from Dock-square, or Milk- 
street, comes out and buys land in the country, his 
first thought is to a fine outlook from his windows : 
his library must command a western view : a sunset 
every day, bathing the shoulder of Blue Hills, 
Wachusett, and the peaks of Monadnoc and Unca- 



98 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

noonuc. What, thirty acres, and all this magnifi- 
cence for fifteen hundred dollars ! It would be 
cheap at fifty thousand. He proceeds at once, his 
eyes dim with tears of joy, to fix the spot for his 
corner-stone. But the man who is to level the 
ground, thinks it will take many hundred loads of 
gravel to fill the hollow to the road. The stone- 
mason who should build the well thinks he shall have 
to dig forty feet : the baker doubts he shall never 
like to drive up to the door : the practical neighbor 
cavils at the position of the barn ; and the citizen 
comes to know that his predecessor the farmer built 
the house in the right spot for the sun and wind, the 
spring, and water-drainage, and the convenience to the 
pasture, the garden, the field, and the road. So Dock- 
square yields the point, and things have their own 
way. Use has made the farmer wise, and the foolish 
citizen learns to take his counsel. From step to step 
he comes at last to surrender at discretion. The 
farmer affects to take his orders ; but the citizen 
says. You may ask me as often as you will, and in 
what ingenious forms, for an opinion concerning the 
mode of building my wall, or sinking my well, or lay- 
ing out my acre, but the ball will rebound to you. 
These are matters on which I neither know, nor need 
to know anything. These are questions which you 
and not I shall answer. 

Not less, within doors, a system settles itself para- 
mount and tyrannical over master and mistress, ser- 
vant and child, cousin and acquaintance. 'Tis in 
vain that genius or virtue or energy of character 
strive and cry against it. This is fate. And 'tis 



WEALTH, 



99 



very well that the poor husband reads in a book of a 
new way of living, and resolves to adopt it at home : 
let him go home and try it, if he dare. 

4. Another point of economy is to look for seed 
of the same kind as you sow : and not to hope to 
buy one kind with another kind. Friendship buys 
friendship ; justice, justice ; military merit, military 
success. Good husbandry finds wife, children, and 
household. The good merchant large gains, ships, 
stocks, and money. The good poet fame, and liter- 
ary credit ; but not either, the other. Yet there is 
commonly a confusion of expectations on these points. 
Hotspur lives for the moment ; praises himself for 
it ; and despises Furlong, that he does not. Hotspur, 
of course, is poor ; and Furlong a good provider. 
The odd circumstance is, that Hotspur thinks it a 
superiority in himself, this improvidence, which ought 
to be rewarded with Furlong's lands. 

I have not at all completed my design. But we 
must not leave the topic, without casting one glance 
into the interior recesses. It is a doctrine of phi- 
losophy, that man is a being of degrees ; that there 
is nothing in the world, which is not repeated in 
his body ; his body being a sort of miniature or sum- 
mary of the world : then that there is nothing in his 
body, which is not repeated as in a celestial sphere in 
his mind : then, there is nothing in his brain, which 
is not repeated in a higher sphere, in his moral 
system. 

5. Now these things are so in Nature. All things 
ascend, and the royal rule of economy is, that it 
should ascend also, or, whatever we do must always 



lOO CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

have a higher aim. Thus it is a maxim, that money 
is another kind of blood. Pecunia alter sanguis : or, 
the estate of a man is only a larger kind of body, and 
admits of regimen analogous to his bodily circula- 
tions. So there is no maxim of the merchant, e.g.y 
" Best use of money is to pay debts ; " " Every busi- 
ness by itself; " " Best time is present time; " "The 
right investment is in tools of your trade ; " or the 
like, which does not admit of an extended sense. 
The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are 
laws of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a 
coarse symbol of the souPs economy. It is, to spend 
for power, and not for pleasure. It is to invest in- 
come ; that is to say, to take up particulars into gen- 
erals ; days into integral eras, — literary, emotive, 
practical, of its life, and still to ascend in its invest- 
ment. The m.erchant has but one rule, absorb and 
invest : he is to be capitalist : the scraps and filings 
must be gathered back into the crucible ; the gas and 
smoke must be burned, and earnings must not go to 
increase expense, but to capital again. Well, the 
man must be capitalist. Will he spend his income, 
or will he invest? His body and every organ is 
under the same law. His body is a jar, in which the 
liquor of life is stored. Will he spend for pleasure? 
The way to ruin is short and facile. Will he not 
spend, but hoard for power? It passes through the 
sacred fermentations, by that law of Nature whereby 
everything climbs to higher platforms, and bodily 
vigor becomes mental and moral vigor. The bread he 
eats is first strength and animal spirits : it becomes, 
in higher laboratories, imagery and thought ; and in 



WEALTH. lOi 

still higher results, courage and endurance. This is 
the right compound interest ; this is capital doubled, 
quadrupled, centupled; man raised to his highest 
power. 

The true thrift is always to spend on the higher 
plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that 
he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in aug- 
menting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, 
in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation, 
nor unless through new powers and ascending pleas- 
ures, he knows himself by the actual experience of 
higher good, to be already on the way to the highest. 



IV. 

CULTURE. 



Can rules or tutors educate 

The semigod whom we await ? 

He must be musical, 

Tremulous, impressional, 

Alive to gentle influence 

Of landscape and of sky, 

And tender to the spirit-touch 

Of man's or maiden's eye ; 

But, to his native centre fast, 

Shall into Future fuse the Past, 

And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast. 



CULTURE. 

The word of ambition at the present day is Cul- 
ture. Whilst all the v/orld is in pursuit of power, and 
of wealth as a means of power, culture corrects the 
theory of success. A man is the prisoner of his 
power. A topical memory makes him an almanac ; a 
talent for debate, a disputant ; skill to get money 
makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces 
these inflammations by invoking the aid of other 
powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing 
to the rank of powers. It watches success. For per- 
formance. Nature has no mercy, and sacrifices the 
performer to get it done ; makes a dropsy or a tympany 
of him. If she wants a thumb, she makes one at the 
cost of arms and legs, and any excess of power in one 
part is usually paid for at once by some defect in a 
contiguous part. 

Our efficiency depends so much on our concentra- 
tion, that Nature usually in the instances where a 
marked man is sent into the world, overloads him 
with bias, sacrificing his symmetry to his working 
power. It is said, no man can write but one book ; 
and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its 
impression on all his performances. If she creates a 
policeman like Fouchd, he is made up of suspicions 
and of plots to circumvent them. "The air," said 
Fouchd, " is full of poniards." The physician Sanc- 
105 



I06 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

torius spent his life in a pair of scales, weighing his 
food. Lord Coke valued Chaucer highly, because the 
Canon Yeman's Tale illustrates the statute He?i. V. 
Chap. 4, against alchemy. I saw a man who believed 
the principal mischiefs in the English state were 
derived from the devotion to musical concerts. A 
freemason, not long since, set out to explain to this 
country, that the principal cause of the success of 
General Washington, was, the aid he derived from 
the freemasons. 

But worse than the harping on one string, Nature 
has secured individualism, by giving the private per- 
son a high conceit of his weight in the system. The 
pest of society is egotists. There are dull and bright, 
sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 'Tis a 
disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. 
In the distemper known to physicians as chorea^ the 
patient sometimes turns round, and continues to spin 
slowly on one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical vario- 
loid of this malady ? The man runs round a ring 
formed by his own talent, falls into an admiration of 
it, and loses relation to the world. It is a tendency 
in all minds. One of its annoying forms, is a craving 
for sympathy. The sufferers parade their miseries, 
tear the lint from their bruises, reveal their indictable 
crimes, that you may pity them. They like sickness, 
because physical pain will extort some show of interest 
from the bystanders, as we have seen children, who, 
finding themselves of no account when grown people 
come in, will cough till they choke, to draw attention. 

This distemper is the scourge of talent, — of artists, 
inventors, and philosophers. Eminent spiritualists 



CULTURE. 107 

shall have an incapacity of putting their act or word 
aloof from them, and seeing it bravely for the noth- 
ing it is. Beware of the man who says, " I am on the 
eve of a revelation." It is speedily punished, inasmuch 
as this habit invites men to humor it, and by treating 
the patient tenderly, to shut him up in a narrower self- 
ism, and exclude him from the great world of God's 
cheerful fallible men and women. Let us rather be 
insulted, whilst we are insultable. Religious literature 
has eminent examples, and if we run over our private 
list of poets, critics, philanthropists, and philosophers, 
we shall find them infected with this dropsy and ele- 
phantiasis, which we ought to have tapped. 

This goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable 
persons, that we must infer some strong necessity in 
nature which it subserves ; such as we see in the sex- 
ual attraction. The preservation of the species was a 
point of such necessity, that Nature has secured it at 
all hazards by immensely overloading the passion, at 
the risk of perpetual crime and disorder. So egotism 
has its root in the cardinal necessity by which each 
individual persists to be what he is. 

This individuality is not only not inconsistent with 
culture, but is the basis of it. Every valuable nature 
is there in its own right, and the student we speak to 
must have a motherwit invincible by his culture, which 
uses all books, arts, facilities, and elegancies of inter- 
course, but is never subdued and lost in them. He 
only is a well-made man who has a good determina- 
tion. And the end of culture is not to destroy this, 
God forbid ! but to train away all impediment and 
mixture, and leave nothing but pure power. Our 



Io8 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

student must have a style and determination, and be 
a master in his own specialty. But, having this, he 
must put it behind him. He must have a catholicity, 
a power to see with a free and disengaged look every 
object. Yet is this private interest and self so over- 
charged, that, if a man seeks a companion who can 
look at objects for their own sake, and without affection 
or self-reference, he will find the fewest who will give 
him that satisfaction ; whilst most men are afflicted 
with a coldness, an incuriosity, as soon as any object 
does not connect with their self-love. Though they 
talk of the object before them, they are thinking of 
themselves, and their vanity is laying little traps for 
your admiration. 

But after a man has discovered that there are limits 
to the interest which his private history has for man- 
kind, he still converses with his family, or a few com- 
panions, — perhaps with half a dozen personalities 
that are famous in his neighborhood. In Boston, the 
question of life is the names of some eight or ten men. 
Have you seen Mr. Allston, Doctor Channing, Mr. 
Adams, Mr. Webster, Mr. Greenough? Have you 
heard Everett, Garrison, Father Taylor, Theodore Par- 
ker? Have you talked with Messieurs Turbinewheel, 
Summitlevel, and Lacofrupees? Then you may as 
well die. In New York, the question is of some other 
eight, or ten, or twenty. Have you seen a few lawyers, 
merchants, and brokers, — two or three scholars, two 
or three capitalists, two or three editors of newspapers ? 
New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is at 
an end, when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen 
personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our 



CULTURE. 109 

American existence. Nor do we expect anybody to 
be other than a faint copy of these heroes. 

Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company of 
intelligent men together again after ten years, and if 
the presence of some penetrating and calming genius 
could dispose them to frankness, what a confession of 
insanities would come up ! The " causes " to which we 
have sacrificed, Tariff or Democracy, Whigism or Abo- 
lition, Temperance or Socialism, would show like roots 
of bitterness and dragons of wrath : and our talents 
are as mischievous as if each had been seized upon by 
some bird of prey, which had whisked him away from 
fortune, from truth, from the dear society of the poets, 
some zeal, some bias, and only when he was now gray 
and nerv^eless, was it relaxing its claws, and he awak- 
ing to sober perceptions. 

Culture is the suggestion from certain best thoughts, 
that a man has a range of affinities, through which he 
can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have 
a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him 
against himself. Culture redresses his balance, puts 
him among his equals and superiors, revives the deli- 
cious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers 
of solitude and repulsion. 

'Tis not a compliment but a disparagement to con- 
sult a man only on horses, or on steam, or on theatres, 
or on eating, or on books, and, whenever h- appears, 
considerately to turn the conversation to the bantling 
he is known to fondle. In the Norse heaven of our 
forefathers, Thor's house had five hundred and forty 
floors ; and man's house has five hundred and forty 
floors. His excellence is facility of adaptation and of 



no CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

transition through many related points, to wide con- 
trasts and extremes. Culture kills his exaggeration, 
his conceit of his village or his city. We must leave 
our pets at home, when we go into the street, and 
meet men on broad grounds of good meaning and good 
sense. No performance is worth loss of geniality. 
'Tis a cruel price we pay for certain fancy goods called 
fine arts and philosophy. In the Norse legend, All- 
fadir did not get a drink of Mimir's spring, (the foun- 
tain of wisdom,) until he left his eye in pledge. And 
here is a pedant that cannot unfold his wrinkles, nor 
conceal his wrath at interruption by the best, if their 
conversation do not fit his impertinency, — here is he 
to afflict us with his personalities. 'Tis incident to 
scholars, that each of them fancies he is pointedly 
odious in his community. Draw him out of this 
limbo of irritability. Cleanse with healthy blood his 
parchment skin. You restore to him his eyes which 
he left in pledge at Mimir's spring. If you are the 
victim of your doing, who cares what you do? We 
can spare your opera, your gazetteer, your chemic 
analysis, your history, your syllogisms. Your man of 
genius pays dear for his distinction. His head runs 
up into a spire, and instead of a healthy man, merry 
and wise, he is some mad dominie. Nature is reckless 
of the individual. When she has points to carry, she 
carries them. To wade in marshes and sea-margins 
is the destiny of certain birds, and they are so ac- 
curately made for this, that they are imprisoned in 
those places. Each animal out of its habitat would 
starve. To the physician, each man, each woman, is 
an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, 



CULTURE. Ill 

a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange func- 
tions. And thus we are victims of adaptation. 

The antidotes against this organic egotism, are, 
the range and variety of attractions, as gained by 
acquaintance with the world, with men of merit, with 
classes of society, with travel, with eminent persons, 
and with the high resources of philosophy, art, and 
religion : books, travel, society, soHtude. 

The hardiest sceptic who has seen a horse broken, 
a pointer trained, or, who has visited a menagerie, 
or the exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not 
de^iy the validity of education. " A boy," says Plato, 
'^ is the most vicious of all wild beasts ; " and, in the 
same spirit, the old English poet Gascoigne says, '• a 
boy is better unborn than untaught." The city breeds 
one kind of speech and manners; the back-country a 
different style ; the sea, another ; the army, a fourth. 
We know that an army which can be confided in, 
may be formed by discipline ; that, by systematic 
discipline all men may be made heroes : Marshal 
Lannes said to a French officer, "Know, Colonel, 
that none but a poltroon will boast that he never was 
afraid." A great part of courage is the courage of 
having done the thing before. And, in all human 
action, those faculties will be strong which are used. 
Robert Owen said, "Give me a tiger, and I Avill edu- 
cate him." 'Tis inhuman to want faith in the power 
of education, since to meliorate, is the law of nature ; 
and men are valued precisely as they exert onward 
or meliorating force. On the other hand, poltroonery 
is the acknowledging an inferiority to be incurable. 

Incapacity of melioration is the only mortal dis- 



112 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

temper. There are people who can never understand 
a trope, or any second or expanded sense given to 
your vi^ords, or any humor ; but remain literalists, 
after hearing the music, and poetry, and rhetoric, and 
wit, of seventy or eighty years. They are past the 
help of surgeon or clergy. But even these can 
understand pitchforks and the cry of fire ! and I have 
noticed in some of this class a marked dislike of 
earthquakes. 
\ Let us make our education brave and preventive. 
Politics is an after-work, a poor patching. We are 
always a little late. The evil is done, the law is 
passed, and we begin the up-hill agitation for repeal 
of that of which we ought to have prevented the 
enacting. We shall one day learn to supersede pol- 
itics by education. What we call our root-and-branch 
reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is 
only medicating the symptoms. We must begin 
higher up, namely, in Education. 

Our arts and tools give to him who can handle them 
much the same advantage over the novice, as if you 
extended his life, ten, fifty, or a hundred years. And 
I think it the part of good sense to provide every fine 
soul with such culture, that it shall not, at thirty or 
forty years, have to say, " This which I might do is 
made hopeless through my want of weapons." 

But it is conceded that much of our training fails of 
effect ; that all success is hazardous and rare ; that a 
large part of our cost and pains is thrown away. 
Nature takes the matter into her own hands, and, 
though we must not omit any jot of our system, we 
can seldom be sure that it has availed much, or, that 



CULTURE. 113 

as much good would not have accrued from a differ- 
ent system. 

Books, as containing the finest records of human 
wit, must always enter into our notion of culture. 
The best heads that ever existed, Pericles, Plato, 
Julius Caesar, Shakspeare, Goethe, Milton, were well- 
read, universally educated men, and quite too wise to 
undervalue letters. Their opinion has weight, be- 
cause they had means of knowing the opposite opin- 
ion. We look that a great man should be a good 
reader, or, in proportion to the spontaneous power 
should be the assimilating power. Good criticism is 
very rare, and always precious. I am always happy 
to meet persons who perceive the transcendent supe- 
riority of Shakspeare over all other writers. I like 
people who like Plato. Because this love does not 
consist with self-conceit. 

But books are good only as far as a boy is ready 
for them. He sometimes gets ready very slowly. 
You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis 
the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to 
the Latin class, but much of his tuition comes, on his 
way to school, from the shop-windows. You like 
the strict rules and the long terms ; and he finds his 
best leading in a by-way of his own, and refuses any 
companions but of his choosing. He hates the 
grammar and Gradtis, and loves guns, fishing-rods, 
horses, and boats. Well, the boy is right ; and you 
are not fit to direct his bringing up, if your theory 
leaves out his gymnastic training. Archery, cricket, 
gun and fishing-rod, horse and boat, are all edu- 
cators, liberalizers; and so are dancing, dress, and 



114 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

the street-talk ; and, — provided only the boy has re- 
sources, and is of a noble and ingenuous strain, — 
these will not serve him less than the books. He 
learns chess, whist, dancing, and theatricals. The 
father observes that another boy has learned algebra 
and geometry in the same time. But the first boy 
has acquired much more than these poor games along 
with them. He is infatuated for weeks with whist 
and chess ; but presently will find out, as you did, 
that when he rises from the game too long played, he 
is vacant and forlorn, and despises himself. Thence- 
forward it takes place with other things, and has its 
due weight in his experience. These minor skills 
and accomplishments, for example, dancing, are 
tickets of admission to the dress-circle of mankind, 
and the being master of them enables the youth to 
judge intelligently of much, on which, otherwise, he 
would give a pedantic squint. Landor said, "I have 
suffered more from my bad dancing, than from all the 
misfortunes and miseries of my life put together." 
Provided always the boy is teachable, (for we are not 
proposing to make a statue out of punk,) football, 
cricket, archery, swimming, skating, climbing, fenc- 
ing, riding, are lessons in the art of power, which it 
is his main business to learn ; — riding, specially, of 
which Lord Herbert of Cherbury said, '' a good rider 
on a good horse is as much above himself and others 
as the world can make him." Besides, the gun, fish- 
ing-rod, boat, and horse, constitute, among all who 
use them, secret freemasonries. They are as if they 
belonged to one club. 

There is also a negative value in these arts. Their 



CULTURE. 115 

chief use to the youth, is, not amusement, but to be 
known for what they are, and not to remain to him 
occasions of heart-burn. We are full of superstitions. 
Each class fixes its eyes on the advantages it has 
not; the refined, on rude strength; the democrat, 
on birth and breeding. One of the benefits of a col- 
lege education is, to show the boy its little avail, I 
knew a leading man in a leading city, who, having 
set his heart on an education at the university, and 
missed it, could never quite feel himself the equal of 
his own brothers who had gone thither. His easy 
superiority to multitudes of professional men could 
never quite countervail to him this imaginary defect. 
Balls, riding, wine-parties, and billiards, pass to a 
poor boy for something fine and romantic, which 
they are not ; and a free admission to them on an 
equal footing, if it were possible, only once or twice, 
would be worth ten times its cost, by undeceiving him. 
I am not much an advocate for travelling, and 
I observe that men run away to other countries, be- 
cause they are not good in their own, and run back 
to their own, because they pass for nothing in the 
new places. For the most part, only the light char- 
acters travel. Who are you that have no task to 
keep you at home ? I have been quoted as saying 
captious things about travel ; but I mean to do jus- 
tice. I think, there is a restlessness in our people, 
which argues want of character. All educated 
Americans, first or last, go to Europe; — perhaps, 
because it is their mental home, as the invalid habits 
of this country might suggest. An eminent teacher 
of girls said, "the idea of a girl's education, is, 



Il6 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

whatever qualifies them for going to Europe."" Can 
we never extract this tape-worm of Europe from tlie 
brain of our countrymen ? One sees very well what 
their fate must be. He that does not fill a place at 
home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide 
his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not 
think you will find anything there which you have 
not seen at home ? The stuff of all countries is just 
the same. Do you suppose, there is any country 
where they do not scald milkpans, and swaddle the 
infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish ? 
What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And 
let him go where he will, he can only find so much 
beauty or worth as he carries. 

Of course, for some men, travel may be useful. 
Naturalists, discoverers, and sailors are born. Some 
men are made for couriers, exchangers, envoys, mis- 
sionaries, bearers of despatches, as others are for 
farmers and working-men. And if the man is of a 
light and social turn, and Nature has aimed to make 
a legged and winged creature, framed for locomo- 
tion, we must follow her hint, and furnish him 
with that breeding which gives currency, as sedu- 
lously as with that which gives worth. But let us 
not be pedantic, but allow to travel its full eflfect. 
The boy grown up on the farm, which he has never 
left, is said in the country to have had no cliance^ 
and boys and men of that condition look upon work 
on a railroad, or drudgery in a city, as opportunity. 
Poor country boys of Vermont and Connecticut 
formerly owed what knowledge they had, to their 
peddling trips to the Southern States. California 



CULTURE. 117 

and the Pacific Coast is now the university of this 
class, as Virginia was in old times. "To have soma 
chance " is their word. And the phrase " to know the 
world," or to travel, is synonymous with all men's 
ideas of advantage and superiority. No doubt, to a 
man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many 
languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts 
and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign 
country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to 
judge his own. One use of travel, is, to recom- 
mend the books and works of home; [we go to 
Europe to be Americanized ;] and another, to find 
men. For, as Nature has put fruits apart in latitudes, 
a new fruit in every degree, so knowledge and fine 
moral quahty she lodges in distant men. And thus, 
of the six or seven teachers whom each man wants 
among his contemporaries, it often happens, that one 
or two of them live on the other side of the world. 

Moreover, there is in every constitution a certain 
solstice, when the stars stand still in our inward 
firmament, and when there is required some foreign 
force, some diversion or alterative to prevent stagna- 
tion. And, as a medical remedy, travel seems one 
of the best. Just as a man witnessing the admirable 
effect of ether to lull pain, and meditating on the 
contingencies of wounds, cancers, lockjaws, rejoices in 
Dr. Jackson's benign discovery, so a man who looks 
at Paris, at Naples, or at London, says, " If I should 
be driven firom ray own home, here, at least, my 
thoughts can be consoled by the most prodigal 
amusement and occupation which the human race in 
ages could contrive and accumulate." 



Il8 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Akin to the benefit of foreign travel, the aesthetic 
value of railroads is to unite the advantages of town 
and country life, neither of which we can spare. A 
man should live in or near a large town, because, let 
his own genius be what it may, it will repel quite 
as much of agreeable and valuable talent as it 
draws, and, in a city, the total attraction of all the 
citizens is sure to conquer, first or last, every repul- 
sion, and drag the most improbable hermit within 
its walls some day in the year. In town, he can find 
the swimming-school, the gymnasium, the dancing- 
master, the shooting-gallery, opera, theatre, and 
panorama; the chemisfs shop, the museum of 
natural history; the gallery of fine arts; the na- 
tional orators, in their turn ; foreign travellers, the 
libraries, and his club. In the country, he can find 
solitude and reading, manly labor, cheap living, and 
his old shoes ; moors for game, hills for geology, 
and groves for devotion. Aubrey writes, "I have 
heard Thomas Hobbes say, that, in the Earl of 
Devon's house, in Derbyshire, there was a good 
library and books enough for him, and his lordship 
stored the library with what books he thought fit 
to be bought. But the want of good conversation was 
a very great inconvenience, and, though he conceived 
he could order his thinking as well as another, yet he 
found a great defect. In the country, in long time, 
for want of good conversation, one's understanding 
and invention contract a moss on them, like an old 
paling in an orchard." 

Cities give us colHsion. 'Tis said, London and 
New York take the nonsense out of a man. A great 



CULTURE. 119 

part of our education is sympathetic and social. Boys 
and girls who have been brought up with well- 
informed and superior people^ show in their manners 
an inestimable grace. Fuller says, that "William, 
Earl of Nassau, won a subject from the King of Spain, 
every time he put off his hat." You cannot have 
one well-bred man, without a whole society of such. 
They keep each other up to any high point. Espe- 
cially women ; — it requires a great many cultivated 
women, — saloons of bright, elegant, reading women, 
accustomed to ease and refinement, to spectacles, 
pictures, sculpture, poetry, and to elegant society, in 
order that you should have one Madame de Stael. 
The head of a commercial house, or a leading law- 
yer or politician is brought into daily contact with 
troops of men from all parts of the country, and 
those too the driving-wheels, the business men of 
each section, and one can hardly suggest for an ap- 
prehensive man a more searching culture. Besides, 
we must remember the high social possibilities of a 
million of men. The best bribe which London offers 
to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast va- 
riety of people and conditions, one can believe there 
is room for persons of romantic character to exist, 
and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope 
to confront their counterparts. 

I wish cities could teach their best lesson, — of 
quiet manners. It is the foible especially of Ameri- 
can youth, — pretension. The mark of the man of 
the world is absence of pretension. He does not 
make a speech ; he takes a low business-tone, avoids 
all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at 



I20 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs 
his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, 
and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. 
His conversation clings to the weather and the news, 
yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, 
and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy. 
How the imagination is piqued by anecdotes of some 
great man passing incognito, as a king in gray clothes, 
— of Napoleon affecting a plain suit at his glittering 
levee ; of Burns, or Scott, or Beethoven, or Welling- 
ton, or Goethe, or any container of transcendent 
power, passing for nobody ; of Epaminondas, " who 
never says anything, but will listen eternally ; " of 
Goethe, who preferred trifling subjects and common 
expressions in intercourse with strangers, worse 
rather than better clothes, and to appear a little more 
capricious than he was. There are advantages in the 
old hat and box-coat. I have heard, that, through- 
out this country, a certain respect is paid to good 
broadcloth; but dress makes a little restraint: men 
will not commit themselves. But the box-coat is 
like wine ; it unlocks the tongue, and men say what 
they think. An old poet says, 

" Go far and go sparing, 
For you'll find it certain, 
The poorer and the baser you appear. 
The more you'll look through still." i 

Not much otherwise Milnes writes, in the " Lay of 
the Humble," 

1 Beaumont and Fletcher : The Tamer Tamed. 



CULTURE. 121 

" To me men are for what they are, 
They wear no masks with me." 

'Tis odd that our people should have — not water 
on the brain, — but a little gas there. A shrewd for- 
eigner said of the Americans, that, "whatever they 
say has a little the air of a speech." Yet one of the 
traits down in the books as distinguishing the Anglo- 
Saxon, is, a trick of self-disparagement. To be sure, 
in old, dense countries, among a million of good 
coats, a fine coat comes to be no distinction, and you 
find humorists. In an English party, a man with 
no marked manners or features, vvdth a face like red 
dough, unexpectedly discloses wit, learning, a wide 
range of topics, and personal familiarity with good 
men in all parts of the world, until you think you 
have fallen upon some illustrious personage. Can 
it be that the American forest has refreshed some 
weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out, 
— the love of the scarlet feather, of beads, and tinsel ? 
The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, 
and embroidery; and I remember one rainy morning 
in the city of Palermo, the street was in a blaze with 
scarlet umbrellas. The English have a plain taste. 
The equipages of the grandees are plain. A gorgeous 
livery indicates new and awkward city wealth. Mr. 
Pitt, like Mr. Pym, thought the title of Mister good 
against any king in Europe. They have piqued them- 
selves on governing the whole world in the poor, 
plain, dark Committee-room which the House of 
Commons sat in, before the fire. 
Whilst we want cities as the centres where the 



122 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying 
trifles. The' countryman finds the town a chop-house, 
a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of grandeur 
of the horizon, hills and plains, and v/ith them, so- 
briety and elevation. He has come among a supple, 
glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile to pub- 
lic opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas of piti- 
ful cares and disasters. You say the gods ought to 
respect a life whose objects are their own ; but in 
cities they have betrayed you to a cloud of insignifi- 
cant annoyances : 

" Mirmidons, race feconde, 
Mirmidons, 

Enfin nous commandons ; 
Jupiter livre le monde 
Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons."! 

'Tis heavy odds 

Against the gods, 

When they will match with myrmidons. 

We spawning, spawning myrmidons, 

Our turn to-day 1 we take command, 

Jove gives the globe into the hand 

Of myrmidons, of myrmidons. 

What is odious but noise, and people who scream 
and bewail ? people whose vane points always east, 
who live to dine, who send for the doctor, who coddle 
themselves, who toast their feet on the register, who 
intrigue to secure a padded chair, and a corner out of 
the draught. Suffer them once to begin the enumera- 
tion of their infirmities, and the sun will go down on 
the unfinished tale. Let these triflers put us out of 

1 Beranger. 



CULTURE. 123 

conceit with petty comforts. To a man at work, the 
frost is but a color : the rain, the wind, he forgot them 
when he came in. Let us learn to live coarsely, 
dress plainly, and lie hard. The least habit of 
dominion over the palate has certain good effects 
not easily estimated. Neither will we be driven into 
a quiddling abstemiousness. 'Tis a superstition to 
insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the 
same chemical atoms. 

A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants. 
How can you mind diet, bed, dress, or salutes or 
compliments, or the figure you make in company, or 
wealth, or even the bringing things to pass, when 
you think how paltry are the machinery and the work- 
ers ? Wordsworth was praised to me, in Westmore- 
land, for having afforded to his country neighbors an 
example of a modest household where comfort and 
culture were secured, without display. And a tender 
boy who wears his rusty cap and outgrown coat, that 
he may secure the coveted place in college, and the 
right in the library, is educated to some purpose. 
There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in 
poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, 
that has not got into literature, and never will, but 
that keeps the earth sweet ; that saves on superflui- 
ties, and spends on essentials ; that goes rusty, and 
educates the boy ; that sells the horse, but builds the 
school ; works early and late, takes two looms in the 
factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mort- 
gage on the paternal farm, and then goes back 
cheerfully to work again. 

We can ill spare the commanding social benefits of 



124 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

cities ; they must be used ; yet cautiously, and haugh- 
tily, — and will yield their best values to him who best 
can do without them. Keep the town for occasions, 
but the habits should be formed to retirement. Soli- 
tude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the 
stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult 
the wings which will bear it farther than suns and 
stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must 
be defended from travelling with the souls of other 
men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in 
the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. " In the 
morning, — solitude ; " said Pythagoras ; that Nature 
may speak to the imagination, as she does never in 
company, and that her favorite may make acquaint- 
ance with those divine strengths which disclose 
themselves to serious and abstracted thought. "'TIS 
very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Her- 
mes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a 
crowd, but descended into it from time to time as 
benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this 
point of securing to the young soul in the disposition 
of time and the arrangements of living, periods and 
habits of solitude. The high advantage of university- 
life is often the mere mechanical one, 1 may call it, of 
a separate chamber and fire, — which parents will 
allow the boy without hesitation at Cambridge, but 
do not think needful at home. We say solitude, to 
mark the character of the tone of thought ; but if it 
can be shared between two or more than two, it is 
happier, and not less noble. "We four," wrote 
Neander to his sacred friends, " will enjoy at Halle 
the inward blessedness of a civitas Dei^ whose founda- 



CULTURE. 125 

tions are forever friendship. The more I know you, 
the more I dissatisfy and must dissatisfy all my 
wonted companions. Their very presence stupefies 
me. The common understanding withdraws itself 
from the one centre of all existence." 

Solitude takes off the pressure of present impor- 
tunities that more catholic and humane relations may 
appear. The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the 
most public and universal: and it is the secret of 
culture, to interest the man more in his pubhc, than 
in his private quality. Here is a new poem, which 
elicits a good many comments in the journals, and in 
conversation. From these it is easy, at last, to elimi- 
nate the verdict which readers passed upon it ; and 
that is, in the main, unfavorable. The poet, as a crafts- 
man, is only interested in the praise accorded to him, 
and not in the censure, though it be just. And the 
poor little poet hearkens only to that, and rejects 
the censure, as proving incapacity in the critic. But 
the poet cultivated becomes a stockholder in both 
companies, — say Mr. Curfew, — in the Curfew stock, 
and in the humanity stock ; and, in the last, exults as 
much in the demonstration of the unsoundness of 
Curfew, as his interest in the former gives him pleas- 
ure in the currency of Curfew. For, the depreciation 
of his Curfew stock only shows the immense values of 
the humanity stock. As soon as he sides with his 
critic against himself, with joy, he is a cultivated man. 

We must have an intellectual quality in all prop- 
erty and in all action, or they are nought. I must 
have children, I must have events, I must have a 
social state and history, or my thinking and speaking 



126 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

v/ant body or basis. But to give these accessories 
any value, I must know them as contingent and rather 
showy possessions, which pass for more to the people 
than to me. We see this abstraction in scholars, as a 
matter of course : but what a charm it adds when 
observed in practical men. Bonaparte, like Caesar, 
was intellectual, and could look at every object for 
itself, without affection. Though an egotist a 
rotit?-a7ice, he could criticise a play, a building, a 
character, on universal grounds, and give a just opin- 
ion. A man known to us only as a celebrity in poli- 
tics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we 
discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill ; 
as when we learn of Lord Fairfax, the Long Parlia- 
ment's general, his passion for antiquarian studies ; or 
of the French regicide Carnot, his sublime genius 
in mathematics ; or of a living banker, his success in 
poetry; or of a partisan journalist, his devotion to 
ornithology. So, if in travelling in the dreary wilder- 



Calderon, we should wish to hug him. In callings 
that require roughest energy, soldiers, sea-captains, 
and civil engineers sometimes betray a fine insight, if 
only through a certain gentleness when off duty ; a 
good-natured admission that there are illusions, and 
who shall say that he is not their sport ? We only 
vary the phrase, not the doctrine, when we say, that 
culture opens the sense of beauty. A man is a beggar 
who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve 
as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be said 
to have arrived at self-possession. I suffer, every day, 



CULTURE. 127 

from the want of perception of beauty in people. 
They do not know the charm with which all moments 
and objects can be embellished, the charm of man- 
ners, of self-command, of benevolence. Repose and 
cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman, — repose 
in energy. The Greek battle-pieces are calm; the 
heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain a 
serene aspect ; as we say of Niagara, that it falls with- 
out speed. A cheerful, intelligent face is the end of 
culture, and success enough. For it indicates the 
purpose of Nature and wisdom attained. 

When our higher faculties are in activity, we are 
domesticated, and awkwardness and discomfort give 
place to natural and agreeable movements. It is 
noticed, that the consideration of the great periods 
and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, 
and an indifference to death. The influence of fine 
scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irri- 
tations and elevates our friendships. Even a high 
dome, and the expansive interior of a cathedral, have 
a sensible effect on manners. I have heard that stiff 
people lose something of their awkwardness under 
high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think, sculpture 
and painting have an effect to teach us manners, and 
abolish hurry. 

But, over all, culture must reinforce from higher 
influx the empirical skills of eloquence, or of politics, 
or of trade, and the useful arts. There is a certain 
loftiness of thought and power to marshal and adjust 
particulars, which can only come from an insight of 
their whole connection. The orator who has once 
seen things in their divine order, will never quite lose 



128 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

sight of this, and will come to affairs as from a higher 
ground, and, though he will say nothing of phi- 
losophy, he will have a certain mastery in dealing 
with them, and an incapableness of being dazzled or 
frighted, which will distinguish his handling from that 
of attorneys and factors. A man who stands on a 
good footing with the heads of parties at Washing- 
ton, reads the rumors of the newspapers, and the 
guesses of provincial politicians, with a key to the 
right and wrong in each statement, and sees well 
enough where all this will end. Archimedes will look 
through your Connecticut machine, at a glance, and 
judge of its fitness. And much more, a wise man 
who knows not only what Plato, but what Saint John 
can show him, can easily raise the affair he deals with, 
to a certain majesty. Plato says, Pericles owed this ele- 
vation to the lessons of Anaxagoras. Burke descended 
from a higher sphere when he would influence hu- 
man affairs. Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Washing- 
ton, stood on a fine humanity, before which the brawls 
of modern senates are but pot-house politics. 

But there are higher secrets of culture, which are not 
for the apprentices, but for proficients. These are les- 
sons only for the brave. We must know our friends 
under ugly masks. The calamities are our friends. 
Ben Jonson specifies in his address to the Muse : — 

" Get him the time's long grudge, the court's ill-will, 
And, reconciled, keep him suspected still, 
Make him lose all his friends, and, what is worse. 
Almost all ways to any better course ; 
With me thou leav'st a better Muse than thee. 
And which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty." 



CULTURE. 129 

We wish to learn philosophy by rote, and play at 
heroism. But the wiser God says, Take the shame, 
the poverty, and the penal solitude, that belong to 
truth-speaking. Try the rough water as well as the 
smooth. Rough water can teach lessons worth know- 
ing. When the state is unquiet, personal qualities 
are more than ever decisive. Fear not a revolution 
which will constrain you to hve five years in one. 
Don't be so tender at making an enemy now and 
then. Be willing to go to Coventry sometimes, and 
let the populace bestow on you their coldest con- 
tempts. The finished man of the world must eat of 
every apple once. He must hold his hatreds also at 
arm's length, and not remember spite. He has neither 
friends ncjr enemies, but values men only as channels 
of power. 

He who aims high, must dread an easy home and 
popular manners. Heaven sometimes hedges a rare 
character about with ungainliness and odium, as the 
burr that protects the fruit. If there is any great and 
good thing in store for you, it will not come at the 
first or the second call, nor in the shape of fashion, 
ease, and city drawing-rooms. Popularity is for dolls. 
" Steep and craggy," said Porphyry, " is the path of 
the gods." Open your Marcus Antoninus. In the 
opinion of the ancients, he was the great man who 
scorned to shine, and who contested the frowns of 
fortune. They preferred the noble vessel too late for 
the tide, contending with winds and waves, dismantled 
and unrigged, to her companion borne into harbor 
with colors flying and guns firing. There is none of 
the social goods that may not be purchased too dear, 



130 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

and mere amiableness must not take rank with high 
aims and self-subsistency. 

Bettine replies to Goethe's mother, who chides her 
disregard of dress, — "If I cannot do as I have a 
mind, in our poor Frankfort, I shall not carry things 
far." And the youth must rate at its true mark the 
inconceivable levity of local opinion. The longer we 
live, the more we must endure the elementary existence 
of men and women; and every brave heart must 
treat society as a child, and never allow it to dictate. 

" All that class of the severe and restrictive virtues," 
said Burke, "are almost too costly for humanity." 
Who wishes to be severe ? Who wishes to resist the 
eminent and polite, in behalf of the poor, and low, 
and impolite ? and who that dares do it, can keep his 
temper sweet, his frolic spirits ? The high virtues are 
not debonair, but have their redress in being illus- 
trious at last. What forests of laurel we bring, and 
the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against 
the opinion of their contemporaries ! The measure 
of a master is his success in bringing all men round 
to his opinion twenty years later. 

Let me say here, that culture cannot begin too 
early. In talking with scholars, I observe that they 
lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood 
which alone could give imaginative literature a religious 
and infinite quality in their esteem. I find, too, that 
the chance for appreciation is much increased by 
being the son of an appreciator, and that these boys 
who now grow up are caught not only years too late, 
but two or three births too late, to make the best 
scholars of. And I think it a presentable motive to a 



CULTURE. 



131 



scholar, that, as, in an old community, a well-born 
proprietor is usually found, after the first heats of youth, 
to be a careful husband, and to feel a habitual desire 
that the estate shall suffer no harm by his administra- 
tion, but shall be delivered down to the next heir in as 
good condition as he received it ; — so, a considerate 
man will reckon himself a subject of that secular 
melioration by which mankind is mollified, cured, and 
refined, and will shun every expenditure of his forces 
on pleasure or gain, which will jeopardize this social 
and secular accumulation. 

The fossil strata show us that Nature began with 
rudimental forms, and rose to the more complex, as 
fast as the earth was fit for their dwelling-place ; and 
that the lower perish, as the higher appear. Very few 
of our race can be said to be yet finished men. We 
still carry sticking to us some remains of the preced- 
ing inferior quadruped organization. We call these 
millions men; but they are not yet men. Half- 
engaged in the soil, pawing to get free, man needs all 
the music that can be brought to disengage him. If 
Love, red Love, with tears and joy; if Want with his 
scourge ; if War with his cannonade ; if Chris- 
tianity with its charity ; if Trade with its money ; 
if Art with its portfolios ; if Science with her tele- 
graphs through the deeps of space and time; can 
set his dull nerves throbbing, and by loud taps 
on the tough chrysalis, can break its walls, and 
let the new creature emerge erect and free, — make 
way, and sing paean ! The age of the quadruped is to 
go out, — the age of the brain and of the heart is to 
come in. The time will come when the evil forms we 



132 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

have known can no more be organized. Man's cul- 
ture can spare nothing, wants all the material. He 
is to convert all impediments into instruments, all 
enemies into power. The formidable mischief will 
only make the more useful slave. And if one shall 
read the future of the race hinted in the organic effort 
of Nature to mount and meliorate, and the correspond- 
ing impulse to the Better in the human being, we 
shall dare affirm that there is nothing he will not over- 
come and convert, until at last culture shall absorb 
the chaos and gehenna. He will convert the Furies 
into Muses, and the hells into benefit. 



V. 

BEHAVIOR. 



Grace, Beauty, and Caprice 

Build this golden portal ; 

Graceful women, chosen men 

Dazzle every mortal : 

Their sweet and lofty countenance 

His enchanting food ; 

He need not go to them, their forms 

Beset his solitude. 

He looketh seldom in their face. 

His eyes explore the ground. 

The green grass is a looking-glass 

Whereon their traits are found. 

Little he says to them, 

So dances his heart in his breast, 

Their tranquil mien bereaveth him 

Of wit, of words, of rest. 

Too weak to win, too fond to shun 

The tyrants of his doom, 

The much deceived Endymion 

Slips behind a tomb. 



BEHAVIOR. 

The soul which animates Nature is not less sig- 
nificantly published in the figure, movement, and 
gesture of animated bodies, than in its last vehicle of 
articulate speech. This silent and subtile language 
is Manners ; not what^ but how. Life expresses. A 
statue has no tongue, and needs none. Good tableaux 
do not need declamation. Nature tells every secret 
once. Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by 
form, attitude, gesture, mien, face, and parts of the 
face, and by the vi^hole action of the machine. The 
visible carriage or action of the individual, as result- 
ing from his organization and his will combined, we 
call manners. What are they but thought entering 
the hands and feet, controlling the movements of the 
body, the speech and behavior? 

There is always a best way of doing everything, if 
it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways 
of doing things ; each once a stroke of genius or of 
love, — now repeated and hardened into usage. They 
form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of 
life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are 
superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a 
depth to the morning meadows. Manners are very 
communicable : men catch them from each other. 
Consuelo, in the romance, boasts of the lessons she 
had given the nobles in manners, on the stage ; and, 
135 



136 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

in real life, Talma taught Napoleon the arts of behav- 
ior. Genius invents fine manners, which the baron 
and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advan- 
tage of a palace, better the instruction. They stereo- 
type the lesson they have learned into a mode. 

The pov/er of manners is incessant, — an element 
as unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any 
country be disguised, and no more in a republic or a 
democracy, than in a kingdom. No man can resist 
their influence. There are certain manners which are 
learned in good society, of that force, that, if a person 
have them, he or she must be considered, and is 
everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or 
wealth, or genius. Give a boy address and accom- 
plishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces 
and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble 
of earning or owning them : they solicit him to enter 
and possess. We send girls of a timid, retreating 
disposition to the boarding-school, to the riding-school, 
to the ballroom, or wheresoever they can come into 
acquaintance and nearness of leading persons of their 
own sex ; where they might learn address, and see it 
near at hand. The power of a woman of fashion to 
lead, and also to daunt and repel, derives from their 
belief that she knows resources and behaviors not 
known to them ; but when these have mastered her 
secret, they learn to confront her, and recover their 
self-possession. 

Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. Peo- 
ple who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. The 
mediocre circle learns to demand that which belongs 
to a high state of nature or of culture. Your manners 



BEHAVIOR, 137 

are always under examination, and by committees 
little suspected, — a police in citizens^ clothes, — but 
are awarding or denying you very high prizes when 
you least think of it. 

We talk much of utilities, — but 'tis our manners 
that associate us. In hours of business, we go to him 
who knows, or has, or does this or that which we 
want, and we do not let our taste or feeling stand in 
the way. But this activity over, we return to the 
indolent state, and wish for those we can be at ease 
with ; those who will go where we go, whose manners 
do -not oiTend us, whose social tone chimes with ours. 
When we reflect on their persuasive and cheering 
force ; how they recommend, prepare, and draw peo- 
ple together ; how, in all clubs, manners make the 
members ; how manners make the fortune of the 
ambitious youth ; that, for the most part, his manners 
marry him, and, for the most part, he marries man- 
ners ; when we think what keys they are, and to what 
secrets ; what high lessons and inspiring tokens of 
character they convey ; and what divination is re- 
quired in us, for the reading of this fine telegraph, we 
see what range the subject has, and what relations to 
convenience, power, and beauty. 

Their first service is very low, — when they are the 
minor morals : but 'tis the beginning of civility, — to 
make us, I mean, endurable to each other. We prize 
them for their rough-plastic, abstergent force ; to get 
people out of the quadruped state ; to get them washed, 
clothed, and set up on end ; to slough their animal 
husks and habits ; compel them to be clean ; overawe 
their spite and meanness, teach them to stifle the 



138 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

base, and choose the generous expression, and make 
them know how much happier the generous behaviors 
are. 

Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is 
infested with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous 
persons who prey upon the rest, and whom, a public 
opinion concentrated into good manners, forms ac- 
cepted by the sense of all, can reach : — the contra- 
dictors and railers at public and private tables, who 
are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of 
honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors 
of the house by barking him out of sight : — I have 
seen men who neigh like a horse when you contradict 
them, or say something which they do not understand : 
— then the overbold, who make their own invitation 
to your hearth : the persevering talker, who gives you 
his society in large, saturating doses ; the pitiers of 
themselves, — a perilous class; the frivolous Asmo- 
deus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of sand 
to twist ; the monotones ; in short, every stripe of 
absurdity ; — these are social inflictions which the mag- 
istrate cannot cure or defend you from, and which 
must be intrusted to the restraining force of custom, 
and proverbs, and familiar rules of behavior im- 
pressed on young people in their school-days. 

In the hotels on the banks of the Mississippi, they 
print, or used to print, among the rules of the house, 
that "no gentleman can be permitted to come to the 
public table without his coat ; " and in the same 
country, in the pews of the churches, little placards 
plead with the worshipper against the fury of expec- 
toration. Charles Dicliens self-sacrificingly under- 



BEHAVIOR. 139 

took the reformation of our American manners in 
unspeakable particulars. I think the lesson was not 
quite lost ; that it held bad manners up, so that the 
churls could see the deformity. Unhappily, the book 
had its own deformities. It ought not to need to 
print in a reading-room a caution to strangers not to 
speak loud; nor to persons who look over fine en- 
gravings, that they should be handled like cobwebs 
and butterflies' wings ; nor to persons who look at 
marble statues, that they shall not smite them with 
canes. But, even in the perfect civiHzation of this 
city, such cautions are not quite needless in the 
Athenaeum and City Library. 

Manners are factitious, and grow out of circum- 
stance as well as out of character. If you look at 
the pictures of patricians and of peasants, of differ- 
ent periods and countries, you will see how well 
they match the same classes in our towns. The 
modern aristocrat not only is well drawn in Titian's 
Venetian doges, and in Roman coins and statues, 
but also in the pictures which Commodore Perry 
brought home of dignitaries in Japan. Broad lands 
and great interests not only arrive to such heads 
as can manage them, but form manners of power. 
A keen eye, too, will see nice gradations of rank, 
or see in the manners the degree of homage the party 
is wont to receive. A prince who is accustomed 
every day to be courted and deferred to by the high- 
est grandees, acquires a corresponding expectation, 
and a becoming mode of receiving and replying to 
this homage. 

There are always exceptional people and modes. 



I40 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

English grandees affect to be farmers. Claverhouse 
is a fop, and, under the finish of dress, and levity 
of behavior, hides the terror of his war. But Na- 
ture and Destiny are honest, and never fail to 
leave their mark, to hang out a sign for each and for 
every quality. It is much to conquer one's face, and 
perhaps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the 
whole secret when he has learned, that disengaged 
manners are commanding. Don't be deceived by 
a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have strong 
wills. We had, in Massachusetts, an old states- 
man, who had sat all his life in courts and in 
chairs of state, without overcoming an extreme irri- 
tability of face, voice, and bearing : when he spoke, 
his voice would not serve him ; it cracked, it broke, 
it wheezed, it piped ; — little cared he ; he knew that 
it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech his argu- 
ment and his indignation. When he sat down, 
after speaking, he seemed in a sort of fit, and held 
on to his chair with both hands : but underneath all 
this irritability, was a puissant will, firm, and advanc- 
ing, and a memory in which lay in order and method 
like geologic strata every fact of his history, and 
under the control of his will. 

Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there 
must be capacity for culture in the blood. Else all 
culture is vain. The obstinate prejudice in favor of 
blood, which lies at the base of the feudal and 
monarchical fabrics of the old world, has some reason 
in common experience. Every man, -— mathema- 
tician, artist, soldier, or merchant, — looks with 
confidence for some traits and talents in his own 



BEHA VIOR. 141 

child, which he would not dare to presume in the 
child of a stranger. The Orientalists are very ortho- 
dox on this point. "Take a thorn-bush," said the 
emir Abdel-Kader, "and sprinkle it for a whole 
year with water ; — it will yield nothing but thorns. 
Take a date-tree, leave it without culture, and it will 
always produce dates. Nobility is the date-tree, and 
the Arab populace is a bush of thorns." 

A main fact in the history of manners is the 
wonderful expressiveness of the human body. If it 
were made of glass, or of air, and the thoughts were 
written on steel tablets within, it could not publish 
more truly its meaning than now. Wise men read 
very sharply all your private history in your look and 
gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is 
bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. 
Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which 
expose the whole movement. They carry the liquor 
of life flowing up and down in these beautiful 
bottles, and announcing to the curious how it is 
with them. The face and eyes reveal what the 
spirit is doing, how old it is, what aims it has. The 
eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul, or, through 
how many forms it has already ascended. It almost 
violates the proprieties, if we say above the breath 
here, what the confessing eyes do not hesitate to utter 
to every street passenger. 

Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far 
seems imperfect. In Siberia, a late traveller found 
men who could see the satellites of Jupiter with 
their unarmed eye. In some respects the animals 
excel us. The lairds have a longer sight, beside the 



142 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

advantage by their wings of a higher observatory. A 
cow can bid her calf, by secret signal, probably of the 
eye, to run away, or to lie down and hide itself. The 
jockeys say of certain horses, that " they look over 
the whole ground." The outdoor life, and hunting, 
and labor, give equal vigor to the human eye. A 
farmer looks out at you as strong as the horse ; his 
eye-beam is like the stroke of a staff. An eye can 
threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or can insult 
like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by 
beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance with 
joy. 

The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. 
When a thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and remain 
gazing at a distance ; in enumerating the names of 
persons or of countries, as France, Germany, Spain, 
Turkey, the eyes wink at each new name. There is 
no nicety of learning sought by the mind, which the 
eyes do not vie in acquiring. " An artist," said Michel 
Angelo, " must have his measuring tools not in the 
hand, but in the eye ; " and there is no end to the 
catalogue of its performances, whether in indolent 
vision, (that of health and beauty,) or in strained 
vision, (that of art and labor.) 

Eyes are bold as lions, — roving, running, leaping, 
here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. 
They wait for no introduction ; they are no English- 
men ; ask no leave of age, or rank ; they respect 
neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, 
nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, 
and go through and through you, in a moment 
of time. What inundation of life and thought 



BEHAVIOR, 143 

is discharged from one soul into another, through 
them ! The glance is natural magic. The mysteri- 
ous communication established across a house be- 
tween two entire strangers, moves all the springs 
of wonder. The communication by the glance is in 
the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. 
It is the bodily symbol of identity of nature. We look 
into the eyes to know if this other form is another 
self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful 
confession what inhabitant is there. The revelations 
are sometimes terrific. The confession of a low, 
usurping devil is there made, and the observer shall 
seem to feel the stirring of owls, and bats, and horned 
hoofs, where he looked for innocence and simplicity. 
'Tis remarkable, too, that the spirit that appears at 
the windows of the house does at once invest himself 
in a new form of his own, to the mind of the beholder^ 
The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, 
with the advantage, that the ocular dialect needs no 
dictionary, but is understood all the world over. 
When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, 
a practised man relies on the language of the first. 
If the man is off his centre, the eyes show it. You 
can read in the e3^es of your companion, whether your 
argument hits him, though his tongue will not confess 
it. There is a look by which a man shows he is 
going to say a good thing, and a look when he has 
said it. Vain and forgotten are all the fine offers and 
offices of hospitality, if there is no holiday in the eye. 
How many furtive inclinations avowed by the eye, 
though dissembled by the lips ! One comes away 
from a company, in which, it may easily happen, he 



144 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

has said nothing, and no important remark has been 
addressed to him, and yet, if in sympathy with the 
society, he shall not have a sense of this fact, such a 
stream of Hfe has been flowing into him, and out from 
him, through the eyes. There are eyes, to be sure, 
that give no more admission into the man than blue- 
berries. Others are liquid and deep, — wells that a 
man might fall into ; — others are aggressive and de- 
vouring, seem to call out the police, take all too much 
notice, and require crowded Broadways, and the 
security of millions, to protect individuals against 
them. The military eye I meet, now darkly sparkling 
under clerical, now under rustic brows. 'Tis the city 
of Lacedaemon ; 'tis a stack of bayonets. There are 
asking eyes, asserting eyes, prowling eyes ; and eyes 
full of fate, — some of good, and some of sinister 
omen. The alleged power to charm down insanity, 
or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye. It 
must be a victory achieved in the will, before it can 
be signified in the eye. 'Tis very certain that each 
man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank 
in the immense scale of men, and we are always learn- 
ing to read it. A complete man should need no 
auxiliaries to his personal presence. Whoever looked 
on him would consent to his will, being certified that 
his aims were generous and universal. The reason 
why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud 
at the bottom of our eye. 

If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the 
other features have their own. A man finds room in 
the few square inches of the face for the traits of all 
his ancestors; for the expression of all his history. 



BEHA VI OR. 145 

and his wants. The sculptor, and Winckelmann, and 
Lavater, will tell you how significant a feature is the 
nose ; how its forms express strength or weakness of 
will, and good or bad temper. The nose of Julius 
Caesar, of Dante, and of Pitt, suggest " the terrors of 
the beak." What refinement, and what limitations, 
the teeth betray ! " Beware you don't laugh," said the 
wise mother, "for then you show all your faults." 

Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he called 
'-^ Theorie de la demarche,'''' in which he says: "The 
look, the voice, the respiration, and the attitude or 
walk, are identical. But, as it has not been given to 
man, the power to stand guard, at once, over these 
four different simultaneous expressions of his thought, 
watch that one which speaks out the truth, and you 
will know the whole man." 

Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of 
manners, which, in the idle and expensive society 
dwelling in them, are raised to a high art. The 
maxim of courts is, that manner is power. A calm 
and resolute bearing, a polished speech, an embel- 
lishment of trifles, and the art of hiding all uncom- 
fortable feeling, are essential to the courtier: and 
Saint Simon, and Cardinal de Retz, and Roederer, 
and an encyclopaedia of Memoires, will instruct you, 
if you wish, in those potent secrets. Thus, it is a 
point of pride with kings, to remember faces and 
names. It is reported of one prince, that his head 
had the air of leaning downwards, in order not to 
humble the crowd. There are people who come in 
ever like a child with a piece of good news. It was 
said of the late Lord Holland, that he always came 



146 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

down to breakfast with the air of a man who had 
just met with some signal good-fortune. In ^'- Noire 
Daine^'' the grandee took his place on the dais, with 
the look of one who is thinking of something else. 
But we must not peep and eavesdrop at palace-doors. 

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in 
others. A scholar may be a well-bred man, or he 
may not. The enthusiast is introduced to polished 
scholars in society, and is chilled and silenced by 
finding himself not in their element. They all have 
somewhat which he has not, and, it seems, ought to 
have. But if he finds the scholar apart from his 
companions, it is then the enthusiasfs turn, and the 
scholar has no defence, but must deal on his terms. 
Now they must fight the battle out on their private 
strengths. What is the talent of that character so 
common, — the successful man of the world, — in 
all marts, senates, and drawing-rooms 1 Manners : 
manners of power ; sense to see his advantage, and 
manners up to it. See him approach his man. He 
knows that troops behave as they are handled at first ; 
— that is his cheap secret , just what happens to every 
two persons who meet on any affair, — one instantly 
perceives that he has the key of the situation, that 
his will comprehends the other's will, as the cat does 
the mouse ; and he has only to use courtesy, and 
furnish good-natured reasons to his victim to cover 
up the chain, lest he be shamed into resistance. 

The theatre in which this science of manners has a 
formal importance is not with us a court, but dress- 
circles, wherein, after the close of the day's business, 
men and women meet at leisure, for mutual entertain- 



BEHAVIOR. 147 

ment, in ornamented drawing-rooms. Of course, it 
has every variety of attraction and merit ; but, to 
earnest persons, to youths or maidens who have great 
objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. A well- 
dressed, talkative company, where each is bent to 
amuse the other, — yet the high-born Turk who came 
hither fancied that every woman seemed to be suffer- 
ing for a chair ; that all the talkers were brained and 
exhausted by the deoxygenated air : it spoiled the 
best persons: it put all on stilts. Yet here are the 
secret biographies written and read. The aspect of 
that man is repulsive ; I do not wish to deal with 
him. The other is irritable, shy, and on his guard. 
The youth looks humble and manly : I choose him. 
Look on this woman. There is not beauty, nor brill- 
iant sayings, nor distinguished power to serve you ; 
but all see her gladly ; her whole air and impression 
are healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, and 
the invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold in 
coming into the world, and has always increased it 
since. Here are creep-mouse manners ; and thievish 
manners. "Look at Northcote," said Fuseli ; "he 
looks like a rat that has seen a cat." In the shallow 
company, easily excited, easily tired, here is the 
columnar Bernard: the Alleghanies do not express 
more repose than his behavior. Here are the sweet 
following eyes of Cecile : it seemed always that she 
demanded the heart. Nothing can be more excellent 
in kind than the Corinthian grace of Gertrude^s man- 
ners, and yet Blanche, who has no manners, has bet- 
ter manners than she ; for the movements of Blanche 
are the sallies of a spirit which is sufficient for the 



148 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

moment, and she can afford to express every thought 
by instant action. 

Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to 
be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a dis- 
tance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not 
belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. 
Society is very swift in its instincts, and, if you do 
not belong to it, resists and sneers at you ; or quietly 
drops you. The first weapon enrages the party 
attacked ; the second is still more effective, but is not 
to be resisted, as the date of the transaction is not 
easily found. People grow up and grow old under 
this infliction, and never suspect the truth, ascribing 
the solitude which acts on them very injuriously, to 
any cause but the right one. 

The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Ne- 
cessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed. 
Those who are not self-possessed, obtrude, and pain 
us. Some men appear to feel that they belong to a 
Pariah caste. They fear to offend, they bend and 
apologize, and walk through life with a timid step. 
As we sometimes dream that we are in a well- 
dressed company without any coat, so Godfrey acts 
ever as if he suffered from some mortifying circum- 
stance. The hero should find himself at home, 
wherever he is ; should impart comfort by his own 
security and good-nature to all beholders. The hero 
is Guffered to be himself. A person of strong mind 
comes to perceive that for him an immunity is secured 
so long as he renders to society that service which is 
native and proper to him, — an immunity from all the 
observances, yea, and duties, which society so tyran- 



BEHAVIOR. 149 

nically imposes on the rank and file of its members. 
" Euripides," says Aspasia, " has not the fine man- 
ners of Sophocles ; but," — she adds good-humor- 
edly, " the movers and masters of our souls have 
surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly 
as they please, on the world that belongs to them, 
and before the creatures they have animated." ^ 

Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar 
than haste. Friendship should be surrounded with 
ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into cor- 
ners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy 
men can usually command. Here comes to me 
Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading and in- 
wrapping him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. 'Tis 
a great destitution to both that this should not 
be entertained with large leisures, but contrariwise 
should be balked by importunate affairs. 

But through this lustrous varnish, the reality is 
ever shining. 'Tis hard to keep the what from 
breaking through this pretty painting of the how. 
The core will come to the surface. Strong will and 
keen perception overpower old manners, and create 
new ; and the thought of the present moment has a 
greater value than all the past. In persons of char- 
acter, we do not remark manners, because of their 
instantaneousness. We are surprised by the thing 
done, out of all power to watch the way of it. 
Yet nothing is more charming than to recognize the 
great style which runs through the actions of such. 
People masquerade before us in their fortunes, titles, 

1 Landor : Pericles and Aspasia. 



150 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

offices, and connections, as academic or civil presi- 
dents, or senators, or professors, or great lawyers, 
and impose on the frivolous, and a good deal on each 
other, by these fames. At least, it is a point of pru- 
dent good manners to treat these reputations ten- 
derly, as if they v^^ere merited. But the sad realist 
knows these fellows at a glance, and they know him ; 
as when in Paris the chief of the police enters a ball- 
room, so many diamonded pretenders shrink and 
make themselves as inconspicuous as they can, or 
give him a supplicating look as they pass. " I had 
received," said a sibyl, " I had received at birth the 
fatal gift of penetration:" — and these Cassandras 
are always born. 

Manners impress as they indicate real power. A 
man who is sure of his point, carries a broad and con- 
tented expression, which everybody reads. And you 
cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, except 
by making him the kind of man of whom that manner 
is the natural expression. Nature forever puts a pre- 
mium on reality. What is done for effect, is seen to 
be done for effect ; what is done for love, is felt to be 
done for love. A man inspires affection and honor, 
because he was not lying in wait for these. The 
things of a man for which we visit him, were done in 
the dark and the cold. A little integrity is better 
than any career. So deep are the sources of this 
surface-action, that even the size of your companion 
seems to vary with his freedom of thought. Not only 
is he larger, when at ease, and his thoughts gener- 
ous, but everything around him becomes variable with 
expression. No carpenter's rule, no rod and chain, 



BEHAVIOR. 151 

will measure the dimensions of any house or house- 
lot : go into the house : if the proprietor is constrained 
and deferring, 'tis of no importance how large his 
house, how beautiful his grounds, — you quickly come 
to the end of all : but if the man is self-possessed, 
happy, and at home, his house is deep-founded, in- 
definitely large and interesting, the roof and dome 
buoyant as the sky. Under the humblest roof, the 
commonest person in plain clothes sits there massive, 
cheerful, yet formidable like the Egyptian colossi. 

Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor 
Champollion has set down the grammar-rules of this 
dialect, older than Sanscrit; but they who cannot 
yet read English, can read this. Men take each 
other's measure, when they meet for the first time, — 
and every time they meet. How do they get this 
rapid knowledge, even before they speak, of each 
other's power and dispositions ? One would say, that 
the persuasion of their speech is not in what they say, 
— or, that men do not convince by their argument, — 
but by their personality, by who they are, and what 
they said and did heretofore. A man already strong 
is listened to, and everything he says is applauded. 
Another opposes him with sound argument, but the 
argument is scouted, until by and by it gets into the 
mind of some weighty person ; then it begins to tell 
on the community. 

Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the 
guaranty that the powers are not squandered in too 
much demonstration. In this country, where school 
education is universal, we have a superficial culture, 
and a profusion of reading and writing and expres- 



152 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

sion. We parade our nobilities in poems and ora- 
tions, instead of working them up into happiness. 
There is a whisper out of the ages to him who can 
understand it, — " whatever is known to thyself alone, 
has always very great value." There is some reason 
to believe, that, when a man does not write his poetry, 
it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the 
one vent of writing ; clings to his form and manners, 
whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them 
except their verses. Jacobi said, that "when a man 
has fully expressed his thought, he has somewhat less 
possession of it." One would say, the rule is, — 
What a man is irresistibly urged to say, helps him 
and us. In explaining his thought to others, he 
explains it to himself: but when he opens it for 
show, it corrupts him. 

Society is the stage on which manners are shown ; 
novels are their literature. Novels are the journal or 
record of manners ; and the new importance of these 
books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins 
to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life 
more worthily. The novels used to be all alike, and 
had a quite vulgar tone. The novels used to lead us 
on to a foolish interest in the fortunes of the boy and 
girl they described. The boy was to be raised from a 
humble to a high position. He was in want of a wife 
and a castle, and the object of the story was to supply 
him with one or both. We watched sympathetically, 
step by step, his climbing, until, at last, the point is 
gained, the wedding day is fixed, and we follow the 
gala procession home to the castle, when the doors 
are slammed in our face, and the poor reader is left 



BEHAVIOR. 153 

outside in the cold, not enriched by so much as an 
idea, or a virtuous impulse. 

But the victories of character are instant, and vic- 
tories for all. Its greatness enlarges all. We are 
fortified by every heroic anecdote. The novels are 
as useful as Bibles, if they teach you the secret, that 
the best of life is conversation, and the greatest suc- 
cess is confidence, or perfect understanding between 
sincere people. 'Tis a French definition of friendship, 
rien que s'entendre, good understanding. The highest 
compact we can make with our fellow, is, — " Let there 
be truth between us two forevermore." That is the 
charm in all good novels, as it is the charm in all 
good histories, that the heroes mutually understand, 
from the first, and deal loyally, and with a profound 
trust in each other. It is sublime to feel and say of 
another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him : 
we need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of 
remembrance: I rely on him as on myself: if he did 
thus or thus, I know it was right. 

In all the superior people I have met, I notice 
directness, truth spoken more truly, as if everything 
of obstruction, of malformation, had been trained 
away. What have they to conceal ? What have they 
to exhibit ? Between simple and noble persons, there 
is always a quick intelligence : they recognize at sight, 
and meet on a better ground than the talents and 
skills they may chance to possess, namely, on sincer- 
ity and uprightness. For, it is not what talents or 
genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that 
constitutes friendship and character. The man that 
stands by himself, the universe stands by him also. 



154 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

It is related of the monk Basle, that, being excom- 
municated by the Pope, he was, at his death, sent in 
charge of an angel to find a fit place of suffering in 
hell ; but, such was the eloquence and good-humor of 
the monk, that, wherever he went he was received 
gladly, and civilly treated, even by the most uncivil 
angels : and, when he came to discourse with them, 
instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took his 
part, and adopted his manners : and even good 
angels came from far, to see him, and take up their 
abode with him. The angel that was sent to find a 
place of torment for him, attempted to remove him to 
a worse pit, but with no better success ; for such was 
the contented spirit of the monk, that he found some- 
thing to praise in every place and company, though in 
hell, and made a kind of heaven of it. At last the 
escorting angel returned with his prisoner to them 
that sent him, saying, that no phlegethon could be 
found that would burn him ; for that, in whatever 
condition, Basle remained incorrigibly Basle. The 
legend says, his sentence was remitted, and he was 
allowed to go into heaven, and was canonized as a 
saint. 

There is a stroke of magnanimity in the correspond- 
ence of Bonaparte with his brother Joseph, when the 
latter was King of Spain, and complained that he 
missed in Napoleon's letters the affectionate tone 
which had marked their childish correspondence. " I 
am sorry," replies Napoleon, "you think you shall 
find your brother again only in the Elysian Fields. 
It is natural, that at forty, he should not feel towards 
you as he did at twelve. But his feelings towards 



BEHAVIOR. 155 

you have greater truth and strength. His friendship 
has the features of his mind." 

How much we forgive to those who yield us the 
rare spectacle of heroic manners ! We will pardon 
them the want of books, of arts, and even of the 
gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them ! 
Here is a lesson which I brought along with me in 
boyhood from the Latin School, and which ranks with 
the best of Roman anecdotes. Marcus Scaurus was 
accused by Quintus Varius Hispanus, that he had 
excited the allies to take arms against the Republic. 
But he, full of firmness and gravity, defended himself 
in this manner: "Quintus Varius Hispanus alleges 
that Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, excited 
the allies to arms : Marcus Scaurus, President of the 
Senate, denies it. There is no witness. Which do 
you believe, Romans ?" " Ut?'i creditis, Quiritesf'' 
When he had said these words, he was absolved by 
the assembly of the people. 

I have seen manners that make a similar impression 
with personal beauty ; that give the like exhilaration, 
and refine us like that ; and, in memorable experi- 
ences, they are suddenly better than beauty, and make 
that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked 
by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. 
They must always show self-control : you shall not be 
facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word ; 
and every gesture and action shall indicate power at 
rest. Then they must be inspired by the good heart. 
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or be- 
havior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around 
us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's 



156 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good 
meaning and thought, and give courage to a com- 
panion. We must be as courteous to a man as we 
are to a picture, which we are willing to give the 
advantage of a good light. Special precepts are not 
to be thought of: the talent of well-doing contains 
them all. Every hour will show a duty as paramount 
as that of my whim just now ; and yet I will write it, 
— that there is one topic peremptorily forbidden to 
all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their 
distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have 
slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, 
or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to 
hold your peace, and not pollute the morning, to 
which all the housemates bring serene and pleasant 
thoughts, by corruption and groans. Come out of the 
azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your 
landscape. The oldest and the most deserving person 
should come very modestly into any newly awaked 
company, respecting the divine communications, out 
of which all must be presumed to have newly come. 
An old man who added an elevating culture to a large 
experience of life, said to me, " When you come into 
the room, I think I will study how to make humanity 
beautiful to you." 

As respects the dehcate question of culture, I do 
not think that any other than negative rules can be 
laid down. For positive rules, for suggestion, Na- 
ture alone inspires it. Who dare assume to guide a 
youth, a maid, to perfect manners ? — the golden 
mean is so delicate, difficult, — say frankly, unattain- 
able. What finest hands would not be clumsy to 



BEHAVIOR. 157 

sketch the genial precepts of the young girl's de- 
meanor? The chances seem infinite against success ; 
and yet success is continually attained. There must 
not be secondariness, and 'tis a thousand to one that 
her air and manner will at once betray that she is not 
primary, but that there is some other one or many of 
her classj to whom she habitually postpones herself. 
But Nature lifts her easily, and without knowing it, 
over these impossibilities, and we are continually 
surprised with graces and felicities not only unteach- 
able, but undescribable. 



VI. 

WORSHIP. 



This is he, who, felled by foes, 

Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows : 

He to captivity was sold, 

But him no prison-bars would hold : 

Though they sealed him in a rock, 

Mountain chains he can unlock : 

Thrown to lions for their meat. 

The crouching lion kissed his feet : 

Bound to the stake, no flames appalled, 

But arched o'er him an honoring vault. 

This is he men miscall Fate, 

Threading dark ways, arriving late, 

But ever coming in time to crown 

The truth, and hurl wrongdoers down. 

He is the oldest, and best known. 

More near than aught thou call'st thy own. 

Yet, greeted in another's eyes. 

Disconcerts with glad surprise. 

This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers. 

Floods with blessings unawares. 

Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, 

Severing rightly his from thine. 

Which is human, which divine. 



WORSHIP. 

Some of my friends have complained, when the 
preceding papers were read, that we discussed Fate, 
Power, and Wealth, on too low a platform ; gave too 
much line to the evil spirit of the times ; too many 
cakes to Cerberus ; that we ran Cudworth's risk of 
making, by excess of candor, the argument of atheism 
so strong, that he could not answer it. I have no 
fears of being forced in my own despite to play, as 
we say, the deviPs attorney. I have no infirmity of 
faith ; no belief that it is of much importance what I 
or any man may say : I am sure that a certain truth 
will be said through me, though I should be dumb, or 
though I should try to say the reverse. Nor do I fear 
skepticism for any good soul. A just thinker will 
allow full swing to his skepticism. I dip my pen in 
the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling 
into my inkpot. I have no sympathy with a poor 
man I knev/, who, when suicides abounded, told me 
he dared not look at his razor. We are of different 
opinions at different hours, but we always may be 
said to be at heart on the side of truth. 

I see not why we should give ourselves such sancti- 
fied airs. If the Divine Providence has hid from men 
neither disease, nor deformity, nor corrupt society, 
but has stated itself out in passions, in war, in trade, 
in the love of power and pleasure, in hunger and 



;6i 



1 62 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

be so nice that we cannot write these facts down 
coarsely as they stand, or doubt but there is a counter- 
statement as ponderous, which we can arrive at, and 
which, being put, will make all square. The solar 
system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the 
credit of truth and honesty is as safe ; nor have I any 
fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard 
on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, 
which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh. The 
strength of that principle is not measured in ounces 
and pounds : it tyrannizes at the centre of Nature. 
We may well give skepticism as much line as we can. 
The spirit will return, and fill us. It drives the drivers. 
It counterbalances any accumulations of power. 

" Heaven kindly gave our blood a moral flow." 

We are born loyal. The whole creation is made of 
hooks and eyes, of bitumen, of sticking-plaster, and 
whether your community is made in Jerusalem or in 
California, of saints or of wreckers, it coheres in a 
perfect ball. Men as naturally make a state, or a 
church, as caterpillars a web. If they were more re- 
fined, it would be less formal, it would be nervous, 
like that of the shakers, who, from long habit of think- 
ing and feeling together, it is said, are affected in the 
same way, at the same time, to work and to play, and 
as they go with perfect sympathy to their tasks in the 
field or shop, so are they inclined for a ride or a jour- 
ney at the same instant, and the horses come up 
with the family carriage unbespoken to the door. 

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a 
tree bears apples. A self-poise belongs to every parti- 



WORSHIP. 163 

cle ; and a rectitude to every mind, and is the Nemesis 
and protector of every society. I and my neighbors 
have been bred in the notion, that, unless we came 
soon to some good church, — Calvinism, or Behmen- 
ism, or Romanism, or Mormonism, — there would be 
a universal thaw and dissolution. No Isaiah or Jer- 
emy has arrived. Nothing can exceed the anarchy 
that has followed in our skies. The stern old faiths 
have all pulverized. 'Tis a whole population of gen- 
tlemen and ladies out in search of religions. Tis as 
flat anarchy in our ecclesiastic realms, as that which 
existed in Massachusetts, in the Revolution, or which 
prevails now on the slope of the Rocky Mountains or 
Pike's Peak. Yet we make shift to live. Men are 
loyal. Nature has self-poise in all her works ; certain 
proportions in which oxygen and azote combine, and, 
not less a harmony in faculties, a fitness in the spring 
and the regulator. 

The decline of the influence of Calvin, or Fenelon, 
or Wesley, or Channing, need give us no uneasiness. 
The builder of heaven has not so ill constructed his 
creature as that the religion, that is, the public nature, 
should fall out : the public and the private element, 
like north and south, like inside and outside, like 
centrifugal and centripetal, adhere to every soul, and 
cannot be subdued, except the soul is dissipated. 
God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of 
churches and religions. 

In the last chapters, we treated some particulars of 
the question of culture. But the whole state of man 
is a state of culture ; and its flowering and completion 
may be described as Religion, or Worship. There is 



1 64 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

always some religion, some hope and fear extended 
into the invisible, — from the bhnd boding which 
nails a horseshoe to the mast or the threshold, up to 
the song of the Elders in the Apocalypse. But the 
religion cannot rise above the state of the votary. 
Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The 
god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusad- 
ers a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant. In 
all ages, souls out of time, extraordinary, prophetic, 
are born, who are rather related to the system of the 
world, than to their particular age and locality. 
These announce absolute truths, v/hich, with what- 
ever reverence received, are speedily dragged down 
into a savage interpretation. The interior tribes of 
our Indians, and some of the Pacific islanders, flog 
their gods, when things take an unfavorable turn. 
The Greek poets did not hesitate to let loose their 
petulant wit on their deities also. Laomedon, in his 
anger at Neptune and Apollo, who had built Troy for 
him, and demanded their price, does not hesitate to 
menace them that he will cut their ears oflf.^ Among 
our Norse forefathers, King Olaf's mode of convert- 
ing Ey vind to Christianity was to put a pan of glowing 
coals on his belly, which burst asunder. "Wilt thou 
now, Eyvind, believe in Christ?" asks Olaf, in excel- 
lent faith. Another argument was an adder put into 
the mouth of the reluctant disciple Rand, who re- 
fused to believe. 

Christianity, in the romantic ages, signified Euro- 
pean culture, — the grafted or meliorated tree in a 
crab forest. And to marry a pagan wife or husband, 

1 Iliad, Book xxi. 1, 455. 



WORSHIP. 165 

was to marry Beast, and voluntarily to take a step 
backwards towards the baboon. 

" Hengist had verament 
A daughter both fair and gent, 
But she was heathen Sarazine, 
And Vortigern for love fine 
Her took to fere and to wife, 
And was cursed in all his life ; 
For he let Christian wed heathen, 
And mixed our blood as flesh and mathen." l 

What Gothic mixtures the Christian creed drew from 
the pagan sources, Richard of Devizes's chronicle of 
Richard I.'s crusade, in the twelfth century, may show. 
King Richard taunts God with forsaking him : " O 
fie ! O how unwilling should I be to forsake thee, in 
so forlorn and dreadful a position, were I thy lord and 
advocate, as thou art mine. In sooth, my standards 
will in future be despised, not through my fault, but 
through thine : in sooth, not through any cowardice 
of my warfare, art thou thyself, my king and my God 
conquered, this day, and not Richard thy vassal." 
The religion of the early English poets is anomalous, 
so devout and so blasphemous, in the same breath. 
Such is Chaucer's extraordinary confusion of heaven 
and earth in the picture of Dido. 

" She was so fair, 
So young, so lusty, with her eyen glad, 
That if that God that heaven and earthe made 
Would have a love for beauty and goodness, 
And womanhede, truth, and seemliness, 
Whom should he loven but this lady sweet ? 
There n' is no woman to him half so meet." 

1 Moths or worms. 



1 66 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

With these grossnesses, we complacently compare 
our own taste and decorum. We think and speak 
with more temperance and gradation, — but is not 
indififerentism as bad as superstition ? 

We live in a transition period, when the old faiths 
which comforted nations, and not only so, but made 
nations, seem to have spent their force. I do not 
find the religions of men at this moment very credit- 
able to them, but either childish and insignificant, or 
unmanly and effeminating. The fatal trait is the di- 
vorce between religion and morality. Here are know- 
nothing religions, or churches that proscribe intellect ; 
scortatory religions ; slave-holding and slave-trading 
religions ; and, even in the decent populations, idola- 
tries wherein the whiteness of the ritual covers scarlet 
indulgence. The lover of the old religion complains 
that our contemporaries, scholars as well as merchants, 
succumb to a great despair, — have corrupted into a 
timorous conservatism, and believe in nothing. In 
our large cities, the population is godless, materi- 
alized, — no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. 
These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and 
appetites walking. How is it people manage to live 
on, — so aimless as they are ? After their peppercorn 
aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones 
alone held them together, and not any worthy pur- 
pose. There is no faith in the intellectual, none in 
the moral universe. There is faith in chemistry, in 
meat, and wine, in wealth, in machinery, in the steam- 
engine, galvanic battery, turbine-wheels, sewing ma- 
chines, and in public opinion, but not in divine 
causes. A silent revolution has loosed the tension 



WORSHIP. 167 

of the old religious sects, and, in place of the gravity 
and permanence of those societies of opinion, they 
run into freak and extravagance. In creeds never 
was such levity ; witness the heathenisms in Chris- 
tianity, the periodic ^' revivals," the Millennium mathe- 
matics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression to 
Popery, the maundering of Mormons, the squalor of 
Mesmerism, the deliration of rappings, the rat and 
mouse revelation, thumps in table-drawers, and black 
art. The architecture, the music, the prayer, partake 
of the madness : the arts sink into shift and make- 
believe. Not knowing what to do, we ape our ances- 
tors ; the churches stagger backward to the mummeries 
of the dark ages. By the irresistible maturing of the 
general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their 
hold. The dogma of the mystic offices of Christ be- 
ing dropped, and he standing on his genius as a moral 
teacher, His impossible to maintain the old emphasis 
of his personality ; and it recedes, as all persons 
must, before the sublimity of the moral laws. From 
this change, and in the momentary absence of any 
religious genius that could offset the immense mate- 
rial activity, there is a feeling that religion is gone. 
When Paul Leroux offered his article '■'- Dieu'''' to the 
conductor of a leading French journal, he replied, 
" La question de Dieu manque d''actnalitey In Italy, 
Mr. Gladstone said of the late King of Naples, "it 
has been a proverb, that he has erected the negation 
of God into a system of government." In this coun- 
try, the like stupefaction was in the air, and the phrase 
" higher law " became a political jibe. What proof of 
infidelity, like the toleration and propagandism of 



1 68 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

slavery ? What, like the direction of education ? 
What, like the facility of conversion ? What, like 
the externality of churches that once sucked the roots 
of right and wrong, and now have perished away till 
they are a speck of whitewash on the wall ? What 
proof of skepticism like the base rate at which the 
highest mental and moral gifts are held ? Let a man 
attain the highest and broadest culture that any Ameri- 
can has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, rail- 
road collision, or other accident, and all America will 
acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him ; 
that, after the education has gone far, such is the 
expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a 
fine person to, is, to drown him to save his board. 

Another scar of this skepticism is the distrust in 
human virtue. It is believed by well-dressed pro- 
prietors that there is no more virtue than they pos- 
sess ; that the solid portion of society exist for the 
arts of comfort : that life is an affair to put somewhat 
between the upper and lower mandibles. How prompt 
the suggestion of a low motive ! Certain patriots in 
England devoted themselves for years to creating a 
public opinion that should break down the corn-laws 
and establish free trade. " Well," says the man in 
the street, " Cobden got a stipend out of it." Kossuth 
fled hither across the ocean to try if he could rouse 
the New World to a sympathy with European liberty. 
" Aye," says New York, "he made a handsome thing 
of it, enough to make him comfortable for life." 

See what allowance vice finds in the respectable 
and well-conditioned class. If a pickpocket intrude 
into the society of gentlemen, they exert what moral 



WORSHIP. 169 

force they have, and he finds himself uncomfortable, 
and glad to get away. But if an adventurer go through 
all the forms, procure himself to be elected to a post 
of trust, as of senator, or presidant, — though by the 
same arts as we detest in the house-thief, — the same 
gentlemen who agree to discountenance the private 
rogue, will be forward to show civilities and marks of 
respect to the public one : and no amount of evidence 
of his crimes will prevent them giving him ovations, 
complimentary dinners, opening their own houses to 
him, and priding themselves on his acquaintance. 
We were not deceived by the professions of the pri- 
vate adventurer, — the louder he talked of his honor, 
the faster we counted our spoons ; but we appeal to 
the sanctified preamble of the messages and procla- 
mations of the public sinner, as the proof of sincerity. 
It must be that they who pay this homage have said 
to themselves. On the whole, we don't know about 
this that you call honesty ; a bird in the hand is 
better. 

Even well-disposed, good sort of people are touched 
with the same infidelity, and for brave, straightforward 
action, use half-measures and compromises. Forgetful 
that a ilittle measure is a great error, forgetful that a 
wise mechanic uses a sharp tool, they go on choosing 
the dead men of routine. But the official men can in 
nowise help you in any question of to-day, they 
deriving entirely fi-om the old dead things. Only 
those can help in counsel or conduct who did not 
make a party pledge to defend this or that, but who 
were appointed by God Almighty, before they came 
into the world, to stand for this which they uphold. 



lyo CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

It has been charged that a want of sincerity in the 
leading men is a vice general throughout American 
society. But the multitude of the sick shall not make 
us deny the existence of health. In spite of our im- 
becility and terrors, and "universal decay of religion," 
&c. &c., the moral sense reappears to-day with the same 
morning newness that has been from of old the foun- 
tain of beauty and strength. You say, there is no 
religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, there 
is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one. 
of his superlative effects. The religion of the culti- 
vated class now, to be sure, consists in an avoidance 
of acts and engagements which it was once their re- 
ligion to assume. But this avoidance will yield spon- 
taneous forms in their due hour. There is a principle 
which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to 
say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, unde- 
scribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peace- 
fully in us, our rightful lord : we are not to do, but to 
let do ; not to work, but to be worked ujDon ; and to 
this homage there is a consent of all thoughtful and 
just men in all ages and conditions. To this senti- 
ment belong vast and sudden enlargements of power. 
'Tis remarkable that our faith in ecstasy consists with 
total inexperience of it. It is the order of the world 
to educate with accuracy the senses and the under- 
standing ; and the enginery at work to draw out these 
powers in priority, no doubt, has its office. But we 
are never without a hint that these powers are medi- 
ate and servile, and that we are one day to deal with 
real being, — essences with essences. Even the fury 
of material activity has some results friendly to moral 



WORSHIP. 171 

health. The energetic action of the times develops 
individualism, and the religious appear isolated. I 
esteem this a step in the right direction. Heaven 
deals with us on no representative system. Souls are 
not saved in bundles. The Spirit saith to the man, 
" How is it with thee ? thee personally ? is it well ? is 
it ill ?" For a great nature, it is a happiness to escape 
a religious training, — religion of character is so apt 
to be invaded. Religion must always be a crab fruit : 
it cannot be grafted and keep its wild beauty. " I 
have seen," said a traveller who had known the ex- 
tremes of society, " I have seen human nature in all 
its forms, it is everywhere the same, but the wilder it 
is, the more virtuous." 

We say, the old forms of religion decay, and that 
a skepticism devastates the community. I do not 
think it can be cured or stayed by any modification 
of theologic creeds, much less by theologic discipline. 
The cure for false theology is motherwit. Forget 
your books and traditions, and obey your moral per- 
ceptions at this hour. That which is signified by the 
words "moral" and "spiritual," is a lasting essence, 
and, with whatever illusions we have loaded them, 
will certainly bring back the words, age after age, to 
their ancient meaning. I know no words that mean 
so much. In our definitions, we grope after the spirit- 
ual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning 
of spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, 
which works without means, and which cannot be 
conceived as not existing. Men talk of "mere moral- 
ity," — which is^much as if one should say, " poor God, 
with nobody to help him." I find the omnipresence 



172 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

and the almightiness in the reaction of every atom in 
Nature. I can best indicate by examples those reac- 
tions by which every part of Nature replies to the pur- 
pose of the actor, — beneficently to the good, penally 
to the bad. Let us replace sentimentalism by realism, 
and dare to uncover those simple and terrible laws 
which, be they seen or unseen, pervade and govern. 

Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not 
cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care 
that he do not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes 
well. He has changed his market-cart into a chariot 
of the sun. What a day dawns, when we have taken 
to heart the doctrine of faith ! to prefer, as a better 
investment, being to doing ; being to seeming ; logic 
to rhythm and to display ; the year to the day : the 
life to the year ; character to performance ; — and have 
come to know, that justice will be done us ; and, if our 
genius is slow, the term will be long. 

'Tis certain that worship stands in some command- 
ing relation to the health of man, and to his highest 
powers, so as to be, in some manner, the source of in- 
tellect. All the great ages have been ages of belief. 
I mean, when there was any extraordinary power of 
performance, when great national movements began, 
when arts appeared, when heroes existed, when poems 
were made, the human soul was in earnest, and had 
fixed its thoughts on spiritual verities, with as strict a 
grasp as that of the hands on the sword, or the pencil, 
or the trowel. It is true that genius takes its rise out 
of the mountains of rectitude ; that all beauty and 
power which men covet, are somehow born out of 
that Alpine district; that any extraordinary degree 



WORSHIP. 173 

of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm. 
Thus, I think, we very slowly admit in another man 
a higher degree of moral sentiment than our own, — 
a finer conscience, more impressionable, or, which 
marks minuter degrees ; an ear to hear acuter notes 
of right and wrong, than we can. I think we listen 
suspiciously and very slowly to any evidence to that 
point. But, once satisfied of such superiority, we set 
no limit to our expectation of his genius. For such 
persons are nearer to the secret of God than others ; 
are bathed by sweeter waters ; they hear notices, they 
see. visions, where others are vacant. We believe that 
holiness confers a certain insight, because not by our 
private, but by our public force, can we share and 
know the nature of things. 

There is an intimate interdependence of intellect 
and morals. Given the equality of two intellects, — 
which will form the most reliable judgments, the 
good, or the bad hearted ? " The heart has its argu- 
ments, with which the understanding is not ac- 
quainted." For the heart is at once aware of the 
state of health or disease, which is the controlling 
state, that is, of sanity or of insanity, prior, of course, 
to all question of the ingenuity of arguments, the 
amount of facts, or the elegance of rhetoric. So 
intimate is this alliance of mind and heart, that talent 
uniformly sinks with character. The bias of errors of 
principle carries away men into perilous courses, as 
soon as their will does not control their passion or 
talent. Hence the extraordinary blunders, and final 
wrong head, into which men spoiled by ambition 
usually fall. Hence the remedy for all blunders, the 



174 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is love. " As 
much love, so much mind," said the Latin proverb. 
The superiority that has no superior; the redeemer 
and instructor of souls, as it is their primal essence, 
is love. 

The moral must be the measure of health. If 
your eye is on the eternal, your intellect will grow, 
and your opinions and actions will have a beauty 
which no learning or combined advantages of other 
men can rival. The moment of your loss of faith, 
and acceptance of the lucrative standard, will be 
marked in the pause, or solstice of genius, the se- 
quent retrogression, and the inevitable loss of attrac- 
tion to other minds. The vulgar are sensible of the 
change in you, and of your descent, though they clap 
you on the back, and congratulate you on your in- 
creased common sense. 

Our recent culture has been in natural science. 
We have learned the manners of the sun and of the 
moon, of the rivers and the rains, of the mineral and 
elemental kingdoms, of plants and animals. Man 
has learned to weigh the sun, and its weight neither 
loses nor gains. The path of a star, the moment of 
an eclipse, can be determined to the fraction of a 
second. Well, to him the book of history, the book 
of love, the lures of passion, and the commandments 
of duty are opened : and the next lesson taught, is, 
the continuation of the inflexible law of matter into 
the subtile kingdom of will, and of thought ; that, if, 
in sidereal ages, gravity and projection keep their 
craft, and the ball never loses its way in its Vvfild path 
through space, — a secreter gravitation, a secreter 



WORSHIP. 175 

projection, rule not less tyrannically in human history, 
and keep the balance of power from age to age un- 
broken. For, though the new element of freedom 
and an individual has been admitted, yet the primor- 
dial atoms are prefigured and predetermined to moral 
issues, are in search of justice, and ultimate right is 
done. Religion or worship is the attitude of those 
who see this unity, intimacy, and sincerity ; who see 
that, against all appearances, the nature of things 
works for truth and right forever. 

'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those 
of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. 
Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, 
but push the same geometry and chemistry up into 
the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, 
look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes 
of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps 
watch and ward. And this appears in a class of facts 
which concerns all men, within and above their creeds. 

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circum- 
stances : It was somebody's name, or he happened to 
be there at the time, or, it was so then, and another 
day it would have been otherwise. Strong men be- 
lieve in cause and effect. The man was born to do 
it, and his father was born to be the father of him 
and of this deed, and, by looking narrowly, you shall 
see there was no luck in the matter, but it was all a 
problem in arithmetic, or an experiment in chemistry. 
The curve of the flight of the moth is preordained, 
and all things go by number, rule, and weight. 

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man 
does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks : as he 



176 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

deals, so he is, and so he appears ; he does not see, 
that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his 
actions ; that fortunes are not exceptions but fruits ; 
that relation and connection are not somewhere and 
sometimes, but everywhere and always ; no miscel- 
lany, no exemption, no anomaly, — but method, and 
an even web ; and what comes out, that was put in. 
As we are, so we do ; and as we do, so is it done to 
us ; we are the builders of our fortunes ; cant and 
lying and the attempt to secure a good which does 
not belong to us, are, once for all, balked and vain. 
But, in the human mind, this tie of fate is made alive. 
The law is the basis of the human mind. In us, it is 
inspiration ; out there in Nature, we see its fatal 
strength. We call it the moral sentiment. 

We owe to the Hindoo Scriptures a definition of 
Law, which compares well with any in our Western 
books. " Law it is, which is without name, or color, 
or hands, or feet ; which is smallest of the least, and 
largest of the large ; all, and knowing all things ; 
which hears without ears, sees without eyes, moves 
without feet, and seizes without hands." 

If any reader tax me with using vague and tradi- 
tional phrases, let me suggest to him, by a few ex- 
amples, what kind of a trust this is, and how real. 
Let me show him that the dice are loaded ; that the 
colors are fast, because they are the native colors of 
the fleece ; that the globe is a battery, because every 
atom is a magnet ; and that the police and sincerity 
of the Universe are secured by God's delegating his 
divinity to every particle ; that there is no room for 
hypocrisy, no margin for choice. 



WORSHIP. 177 

The countryman leaving his native village, for the 
first time, and going abroad, finds all his habits 
broken up. In a new nation and language, his sect, 
as Quaker, or Lutheran, is lost. What! it is not then 
necessary to the order and existence of society? He 
misses this, and the commanding eye of his neighbor- 
hood, which held him to decorum. This is the peril 
of New York, of New Orleans, of London, of Paris, to 
young men. But after a little experience, he makes 
the discovery that there are no large cities, — none 
large enough to hide in ; that the censors of action 
are as numerous and as near in Paris, as in Littleton 
or Portland ; that the gossip is as prompt and venge- 
ful. There is no concealment, and, for each offence, a 
several vengeance ; that, reaction, or nothing for noth- 
ing, or, things are as broad as they are long, is not a 
rule for Littleton or Portland, but for the Universe. 

We cannot spare the coarsest muniment of virtue. 
We are disgusted by gossip ; yet it is of importance 
to keep the angels in their proprieties. The smallest 
fly will draw blood, and gossip is a weapon impossible 
to exclude from the privatest, highest, selectest. Na- 
ture created a police of many ranks. God has dele- 
gated himself to a million deputies. From these low 
external penalties, the scale ascends. Next come the 
resentments, the fears, which injustice calls out ; then, 
the false relations in which the offender is put to 
other men ; and the reaction of his fault on himself, 
in the solitude and devastation of his mind. 

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor 
his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will 
characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If 



178 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in 
that state of mind you had, when you made it. If 
you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on 
pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are 
all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and 
things themselves are detective. If you follow the 
suburban fashion in building a sumptuous-looking 
house for a little money, it will appear to all eyes as a 
cheap dear house. There is no privacy that cannot 
be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized 
world. Society is a masked ball, where every one 
hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding. If 
a man wish to conceal anything he carries, those 
whom he meets know that he conceals somewhat, 
and usually know what he conceals. Is it otherwise 
if there be some belief or some purpose he would 
bury in his breast ? 'Tis as hard to hide as fire. He 
is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. A 
man cannot utter two or three sentences, without dis- 
closing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands 
in life and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom 
of the senses and the understanding, or, in that of 
ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and 
duty. People seem not to see that their opinion of 
the world is also a confession of character. We can 
only see what we are, and if we misbehave we suspect 
others. The fame of Shakspeare or of Voltaire, of 
Thomas k Kempis, or of Bonaparte, characterizes 
those who give it. As gas-light is found to be the 
best nocturnal police, so the universe protects itself 
by pitiless publicity. 

Each must be armed — not necessarily with musket 



WORSHIP, 179 

and pike. Happy, if, seeing these, he can feel that he 
has better muskets and pikes in his energy and con- 
stancy. To every creature is his own weapon, how- 
ever skilfully concealed from himself, a good while. 
His work is sword and shield. Let him accuse none, 
let him injure none. The way to mend the bad world, 
is to create the right world. Here is a low political 
economy plotting to cut the throat of foreign competi- 
tion, and establish our own ; — excluding others by 
force, or making war on them ; or, by cunning tariffs, 
giving preference to worse wares of ours. But the 
real.and lasting victories are those of peace, and not 
of war. The way to conquer the foreign artisan, is, 
not to kill him, but to beat his work. And the Crys- 
tal Palaces and World Fairs, with their committees 
and prizes on all kinds of industry, are the result of 
this feeling. The American workman who strikes 
ten blows with his hammer, whilst the foreign work- 
man only strikes one, is as really vanquishing that 
foreigner, as if the blows were aimed at and told on 
his person. I look on that man as happy, who, when 
there is question of success, looks into his work for a 
reply, not into the market, not into opinion, not into 
patronage. In every variety of human employment, 
in the mechanical and in the fine arts, in navigation, 
in farming, in legislating, there are among the num- 
bers who do their task perfunctorily, as we say, or 
just to pass, and as badly as they dare, — there are 
the working-men, on whom the burden of the busi- 
ness falls, — those who love work, and love to see it 
rightly done, who finish their task for its own sake ; 
and the state and the world is happy, that has the 



l8o CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

most of such finishers. The world will always do jus- 
tice at last to such finishers : it cannot otherwise. 
He who has acquired the ability, may wait securely 
the occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and 
know that it will not loiter. Men talk as if victory 
were something fortunate. Work is victory. Wher- 
ever work is done, victory is obtained. There is no 
chance, and no blanks. You want but one verdict: 
if you have your own, you are secure of the rest. 
And yet, if witnesses are wanted, witnesses are near. 
There was never a man born so wise or good, but 
one or more companions came into the world with 
him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. I can- 
not see without awe, that no man thinks alone, and no 
man acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up 
with him into life, — now under one disguise, now under 
another, — like a police in citizens' clothes, walk with 
him, step for step, through all the kingdom of time. 

This reaction, this sincerity is the property of all 
things. To make our word or act sublime, we must 
make it real. It is our system that counts, not the 
single word or unsupported action. Use what lan- 
guage you will, you can never -say anything but what 
you are. What I am, and what I think, is conveyed 
to you, in spite of my efforts to hold it back. What 
I am has been secretly conveyed from me to another, 
whilst I was vainly making up my mind to tell him it. 
He has heard from me what I never spoke. 

As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sin- 
cerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or 
amused. In the progress of the character, there is 
an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a 



WORSHIP. i8i 

decreasing faith in propositions. Young people ad- 
mire talents, and particular excellences. As we grow 
older, we value total powers and effects, as the spirit, 
or quality of the man. We have another sight, and a 
new standard ; an insight which disregards what is done 
for the eye, and pierces to the doer ; an ear which hears 
not what men say, but hears what they do not say. 

There was a wise, devout man who is called, in the 
Catholic Church, St. Philip Neri, of whom many anec- 
dotes touching his discernment and benevolence are 
told at Naples and Rome. Among the nuns in a 
convent not far from Rome, one had appeared, who 
laid claim to certain rare gifts of inspiration and 
prophecy, and the abbess advised the Holy Father, 
at Rome, of the wonderful powers shown by her 
novice. The Pope did not well know what to make 
of these new claims, and Philip coming in from a 
journey, one day, he consulted him. Philip under- 
took to visit the nun, and ascertain her character. 
He threw himself on his mule, all travel-soiled as he 
was, and hastened through the mud and mire to the 
distant convent. He told the abbess the wishes of 
his Holiness, and begged her to summon the nun 
without delay. The nun was sent for, and, as soon 
as she came into the apartment, Philip stretched out 
his leg all bespattered with mud, and desired her to 
draw off his boots. The young nun, who had become 
the object of much attention and respect, drew back 
with anger, and refused the office : Philip ran out of 
doors, mounted his mule, and returned instantly to the 
Pope ; " Give yourself no uneasiness. Holy Father, any 
longer : here is no miracle, for here is no humility." 



1 82 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

We need not much mind what people please to say^ 
but what they must say ; what their natures say, though 
their busy, artful, Yankee understandings try to hold 
back, and choke that word, and to articulate some- 
thing different. If we will sit quietly, — what they 
ought to say is said, with their will, or against their 
will. We do not care for you, let us pretend what we 
will : — we are always looking through you to the dim 
dictator behind you. Whilst your habit or whim 
chatters, we civilly and impatiently wait until that 
wise superior shall speak again. Even children are 
not deceived by the false reasons which their parents 
give in answer to their questions, whether touching 
natural facts, or religion, or persons. When the parent, 
instead of thinking how it really is, puts them off with 
a traditional or a hypocritical answer, the children 
perceive that it is traditional or hypocritical. To a 
sound constitution the defect of another is at once 
manifest : and the marks of it are only concealed from 
us by our own dislocation. An anatomical observer 
remarks, that the sympathies of the chest, abdomen, 
and pelvis, tell at last on the face, and on all its fea- 
tures. Not only does our beauty waste, but it leaves 
word how it went to waste. Physiognomy and phre- 
nology are not new sciences, but declarations of the 
soul that it is aware of certain new sources of informa- 
tion. And now sciences of broader scope are starting 
up behind these. And so for ourselves, it is really of 
little importance what blunders in statement we make, 
so only we make no wilful departures from the truth. 
How a man's truth comes to mind, long after we have 
forgotten all his words ! How it comes to us in silent 



WORSHIP. 183 

hours, that truth is our only armor in all passages of life 
and death! Wit is cheap, and anger is cheap; but 
if you cannot argue or explain yourself to the other 
party, cleave to the truth against me, against thee, and 
you gain a station from which you cannot be dis- 
lodged. The other party will forget the words that 
you spoke, but the part you took continues to plead 
for you. 

Why should I hasten to solve every riddle which 
life offers me ? I am well assured that the Ques- 
tioner, who brings me so many problems, will bring 
the answers also in due time. Very rich, very potent, 
very cheerful Giver that he is, he shall have it all his 
own way, for me. Why should I give up my thought, 
because I cannot answer an objection to it ? Con- 
sider only, whether it remains in my life the same it 
was. That only which we have within, can we see 
without. If we meet no gods, it is because we har- 
bor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find 
grandeur in porters and sweeps. He only is rightly 
immortal, to whom all things are immortal. I have 
read somewhere, that none is accomplished, so long 
as any are incomplete ; that the happiness of one can- 
not consist with the misery of any other. 

The Buddhists say, " No seed will die : " every seed 
will grow. Where is the service which can escape its 
remuneration ? What is vulgar, and the essence of 
all vulgarity, but the avarice of reward ? 'Tis the dif- 
ference of artisan and artist, of talent and genius, of 
sinner and saint. The man whose eyes are nailed 
not on the nature of his act, but on the wages, whether 
it be money, or office, or fame, — is almost equally 



1 84 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

low. He is great, whose eyes are opened to see that 
the reward of actions cannot be escaped, because he 
is transformed into his action, and taketh its nature, 
which bears its own fruit, like every other tree. A 
great man cannot be hindered of the effect of his act, 
because it is immediate. The genius of life is friendly 
to the noble, and in the dark brings them friends from 
far. Fear God, and where you go, men shall think 
they walk in hallowed cathedrals. 

And so I look on those sentiments which make the 
glory of the human being, love, humility, faith, as be- 
ing also the intimacy of Divinity in the atoms ; and, 
that, as soon as the man is right, assurances and pre- 
visions emanate from the interior of his body and his 
mind ; as, when flowers reach their ripeness, incense 
exhales from them, and, as a beautiful atmosphere is 
generated from the planet by the averaged emanations 
from all its rocks and soils. 

Thus man is made equal to every event. He can 
face danger for the right. A poor, tender, painful 
body, he can run into flame or bullets or pestilence, 
with duty for his guide. He feels the insurance of a 
just employment. I am not afraid of accident, as 
long as I am in my place. It is strange that superior 
persons should not feel that they have some better 
resistance against cholera, than avoiding green peas 
and salads. Life is hardly respectable, — is it ? if it 
has no generous, guaranteeing task, no duties or affec- 
tions, that constitute a necessity of existing. Every 
man's task is his life-preserver. The conviction that 
his work is dear to God and cannot be spared, defends 
him. The lightning-rod that disarms the cloud of its 



WORSHIP. 185 

threat is his body in its duty. A high aim reacts on 
the means, on the days, on the organs of the body. 
A high aim is curative, as well as arnica. " Napo- 
leon," says Goethe, " visited those sick of the plague, 
in order to prove that the man v^ho could vanquish 
fear, could vanquish the plague also; and he was 
right. 'Tis incredible what force the will has in such 
cases : it penetrates the body, and puts it in a state 
of activity, which repels all hurtful influences ; whilst 
fear invites them." 

It is related of William of Orange, that, whilst he 
was besieging a town on the continent, a gentleman 
sent to him on public business came to his camp, and, 
learning that the King was before the walls, he ven- 
tured to go where he was. He found him directing 
the operation of his gunners, and, having explained 
his errand, and received his answer, the King said, 
" Do you not know, sir, that every moment you spend 
here is at the risk of your life?" "I run no more 
risk," replied the gentleman, " than your Majesty." 
"Yes," said the King, "but my duty brings me 
here, and yours does not." In a few minutes, a 
cannon-ball fell on the spot, and the gentleman 
was killed. 

Thus can the faithful student reverse all the warn- 
ings of his early instinct, under the guidance of a 
deeper instinct. He learns to welcome misfortune, 
learns that adversity is the prosperity of the great. 
He learns the greatness of humility. He shall work 
in the dark, work against failure, pain, and ill-will. 
If he is insulted, he can be insulted ; all his affair is 
not to insult. Hafiz writes, 



1 86 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

" At the last day, men shall wear 
On their heads the dust, 
As ensign and as ornament 
Of their lowly trust." 

The moral equalizes all; enriches^ empowers all. 
It is the coin which buys all, and which all find in 
their pocket. Under the whip of the driver, the slave 
shall feel his equality with saints and heroes. In the 
greatest destitution and calamity, it surprises man 
with a feeling of elasticity which makes nothing of 
loss. 

I recall some traits of a remarkable person whose 
life and discourse betrayed many inspirations of this 
sentiment. Benedict was always great in the present 
time. He had hoarded nothing from the past, neither 
in his cabinets, neither in his memory. He had no 
designs on the future, neither for what he should do 
to men, nor for what men should do for him. He 
said, " I am never beaten until I know that I am 
beaten. I meet powerful brutal people to whom I 
have no skill to reply. They think they have defeated 
me. It is so pubHshed in society, in the journals ; I 
am defeated in this fashion, in all men's sight, perhaps 
on a dozen different lines. My ledger may show that I 
am in debt, cannot yet make my ends meet, and van- 
quish the enemy so. My race may not be prospering: 
we are sick, ugly, obscure, unpopular. My children 
may be worsted. I seem to fail in my friends and 
clients, too. That is to say, in all the encounters that 
have yet chanced, I have not been weaponed for that 
particular occasion, and have been historically beaten ; 
and yet, I know, all the^time, that I have never been 



WORSHIP. 187 

beaten; have never yet fought, shall certainly fight, 
when my hour comes, and shall beat." " A man," 
says the Vishnu Sarma, " who having well compared 
his own strength or weakness with that of others, 
after all doth not know the difference, is easily over- 
come by his enemies." 

" I spent," he said, " ten months in the country. 
Thick-starred Orion was my only companion. Wher- 
ever a squirrel or a bee can go with security, I can go. 
I ate whatever was set before me ; I touched ivy and 
dogwood. When I went abroad, I kept company 
wi-th every man on the road, for I knew that my evil 
and my good did not come from these, but from the 
Spirit, whose servant I was. For I could not stoop 
to be a circumstance, as they did, who put their life 
into their fortune and their company. I would not 
degrade myself by casting about in my memory for a 
thought, nor by waiting for one. If the thought come, 
I would give it entertainment. It should, as it ought, 
go into my hands and feet ; but if it come not spon- 
taneously, it comes not rightly at all. If it can spare 
me, I am sure I can spare it. It shall be the same 
with my friends. I will never woo the loveliest. I 
will not ask any friendship or favor. When I come 
to my own, we shall both know it. Nothing will be 
to be asked or to be granted." Benedict went out to 
seek his friend, and met him on the way ; but he ex- 
pressed no surprise at any coincidences. On the other 
hand, if he called at the door of his friend, and he was 
not at home, he did not go again ; concluding that he 
had misinterpreted the intimations. 

He had the whim not to make an apology to the 



1 88 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

same individual whom he had wronged. For this, he 
said, was a piece of personal vanity ; but he would 
correct his conduct in that respect in which he had 
faulted, to the next person he should meet. Thus, he 
said, universal justice was satisfied. 

Mira came to ask what she should do with the poor 
Genesee woman who had hired herself to work for 
her, at a shilling a day, and, now sickening, was like 
to be bedridden on her hands. Should she keep her, 
or should she dismiss her? But Benedict said, "Why 
ask? One thing will clear itself as the thing to be 
done, and not another, when the hour comes. Is it a 
question, whether to put her into the street? Just as 
much whether to thrust the little Jenny on your arm 
into the street. The milk and meal you give the beg- 
gar, will fatten Jenny. Thrust the woman out, and 
you thrust your babe out of doors, whether it so seem 
to you or not." 

In the Shakers, so called, I find one piece of belief, 
in the doctrine which they faithfully hold, that en- 
courages them to open their doors to every wayfaring 
man who proposes to come among them ; for, they 
say, the Spirit will presently manifest to the man him- 
self, and to the society, what manner of person he is, 
and whether he belongs among them. They do not 
receive him, they do not reject him. And not in vain 
have they worn their clay coat, and drudged in their 
fields, and shufiled in their Bruin dance, from year to 
year, if they have truly learned thus much wisdom. 

Honor him whose Hfe is perpetual victory; him, 
who, by sympathy with the invisible and real, finds 
support in labor, instead of praise; who does not 



WORSHIP. 189 

shine, and would rather not. With eyes open, he 
makes the choice of virtue, which outrages the virtu- 
ous ; of religion, which churches stop their discords 
to burn and exterminate ; for the highest virtue is 
always against the law. 

Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the arith- 
metician. Talent and success interest me but moder- 
ately. The great class, they who affect our imagination, 
the men who could not make their hands meet around 
their objects, the rapt, the lost, the fools of ideas, — 
they suggest what they cannot execute. They speak 
to the ages, and are heard from afar. The Spirit does 
not love cripples and malformations. If there ever 
was a good man, be certain, there was another, and 
will be more. 

And so in relation to that future hour, that spectre 
clothed with beauty at our curtain by night, at our 
table by day, — the apprehension, the assurance of a 
coming change. The race of mankind have always 
offered at least this implied thanks for the gift of 
existence, — namely, the terror of its being taken 
away ; the insatiable curiosity and appetite for its 
continuation. The whole revelation that is vouch- 
safed us, is, the gentle trust, which, in our experience 
we find, will cover also with flowers the slopes of this 
chasm. 

Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is 
incurious. It is so well, that it is sure it will be well. 
It asks no questions of the Supreme Power. The son 
of Antiochus asked his father, when he would join 
battle? "Dost thou fear," replied the King, "that 
thou only in all the army wilt not hear the trumpet? " 



I90 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

'Tis a higher thing to confide, that, if it is best we 
should live, we shall live, — 'tis higher to have this 
conviction, than to have the lease of indefinite cen- 
turies and millenniums and aeons. Higher than the 
question of our duration is the question of our deserv- 
ing. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, 
and he who would be a great soul in future, must be 
a great soul now. It is a doctrine too great to rest on 
any legend, that is, on any man's experience but our 
own. It must be proved, if at all, from our own ac- 
tivity and designs, which imply an interminable future 
for their play. 

What is called religion effeminates and demoralizes. 
Such as you are, the gods themselves could not help 
you. Men are too often unfit to live, from their obvi- 
ous inequality to their own necessities, or, they suffer 
from politics, or bad neighbors, or from sickness, and 
they would gladly know 'that they were to be dis- 
missed from the duties of life. But the wise instinct 
asks, " How will death help them ? " These are not 
dismissed when they die. You shall not wish for death 
out of pusillanimity. The weight of the Universe is 
pressed down on the shoulders of each moral agent to 
hold him to his task. The only path of escape known 
in all the worlds of God is performance. You must 
do your work, before you shall be released. And as 
far as it is a question of fact respecting the govern- 
ment of the Universe, Marcus Antoninus summed the 
whole in a word, " It is pleasant to die, if there be 
gods ; and sad to live, if there be none." 

And so I think that the last lesson of life, the 
choral song which rises from all elements and all 



WORSHIP. 



191 



angels, is, a voluntary obedience, a necessitated free- 
dom. Man is made of the same atoms as the world 
is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, 
and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when 
his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the 
sublime ' order, and does, with knowledge, what the 
stones do by structure. 

The religion which is to guide and fulfil the present 
and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intel- 
lectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which 
is science. "There are tw6 things," said Mahomet, 
" which I abhor, the learned in his infidelities, and the 
fool in his devotions." Our times are impatient of 
both, and specially of the last. Let us have nothing 
now which is not its own evidence. There is surely 
enough for the heart and imagination in the religion 
itself. Let us not be pestered with assertions and 
half-truths, with emotions and snufiie. 

There will be a new church founded on moral sci- 
ence, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger 
again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law, the 
church of men to come, without shawms, or psaltery, 
or sackbut ; but it will have heaven and earth for its 
beams and rafters ; science for symbol and illustra- 
tion ; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, 
poetry. Was never stoicism so stern and exigent as 
this shall be. It shall send man home to his central 
solitude, shame these social, supplicating manners, 
and make him know that much of the time he must 
have himself to his friend. He shall expect no co- 
operation, he shall walk with no companion. The 
nameless Thought, the nameless Power, the superper- 



192 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

sonal Heart, — he shall repose alone on that. He 
needs only his own verdict. No good fame can help, 
no bad fame can hurt him. The Laws are his con- 
solers, the good Laws themselves are alive, they know 
if he have kept them, they animate him with the lead- 
ing of great duty, and an endless horizon. Honor and 
fortune exist to him who always recognizes the neigh- 
borhood of the great, always feels himself in the pres- 
ence of high causes. 



VII. 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 



Hear what British Merlin sung, 

Of keenest eye and truest tongue. 

Say not, the chiefs who first arrive 

Usurp the seats for which all strive ; 

The forefathers this land who found 

Failed to plant the vantage-ground ; 

Ever from one who comes to-morrow 

Men wait their good and truth to borrow. 

But wilt thou measure all thy road, 

See thou lift the lightest load. 

Who has little, to him who has less, can spare, 

And thou, Cyndyllan's son ! beware 

Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear. 

To falter ere thou thy task fulfil, — 

Only the light-armed climb the hill. 

The richest of all lords is Use, 

And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. 

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, 

Drink the wild air's salubrity : 

Where the star Canope shines in May, 

Shepherds are thankful, and nations gay. 

The music that can deepest reach. 

And cure all ill, is cordial speech : 

Mask thy wisdom with delight. 

Toy with the bow, yet hit the white. 

Of all wit's uses, the main one 

Is to live well with who has none. 

Cleave to thine acre ; the round year 

Will fetch all fruits and virtues here : 

Fool and foe may harmless roam, 

Loved and lovers bide at home. 

A day for toil, an hour for sport, 

But for a friend is life too short. 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 

Although this garrulity of advising is born with 
us, L confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, 
than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible 
dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration 
enters into it, that we doubt we can say anything out 
of our own experience whereby to help each other. 
All the professions are timid and expectant agencies. 
The priest is glad if his prayers or his sermon meet 
the condition of any soul ; if of two, if of ten, 'tis a 
signal success. But he walked to the church without 
any assurance that he knew the distemper, or could 
heal it. The physician prescribes hesitatingly out of 
his few resources, the same tonic or sedative to this 
new and peculiar constitution, which he has applied 
with various success to a hundred men before. If 
the patient mends, he is glad and surprised. The 
lawyer advises the client, and tells his story to the 
jury, and leaves it with them, and is as gay and as 
much relieved as the client, if it turns out that he has 
a verdict. The judge weighs the arguments, and puts 
a brave face on the matter, and, since there must be a 
decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done 
justice, and given satisfaction to the community ; but 
is only an advocate after all. And so is all life a 
timid and unskilful spectator. We do what we must, 
195 



196 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

and call it by the best names. We like very well to 
be praised for our action, but our conscience says, 
" Not unto us." 'Tis little we can do for each other. 
We accompany the youth with sympathy, and mani- 
fold old sayings of the wise, to the gate of the arena, 
but 'tis certain that not by strength of ours, or of the 
old sayings, but only on strength of his own, un- 
known to us or to any, he must stand or fall. That 
by which a man conquers in any passage, is a pro- 
found secret to every other being in the world, and it 
is only as he turns his back on us and on all men, 
and draws on this most private wisdom, that any 
good can come to him. What we have, therefore, 
to say of life, is rather description, or, if you please, 
celebration, than available rules. 

Yet vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either 
think or feel strongly, adds to our power, and enlarges 
our field of action. We have a debt to every great 
heart, to every fine genius ; to those who have put life 
and fortune on the cast of an act of justice ; to those 
who have added new sciences ; to those who have re- 
fined life by elegant pursuits. 'Tis the fine souls who 
serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine 
society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities 
of the street and the tavern. Fine society, in the 
common acceptation, has neither ideas nor aims. It 
renders the service of a perfumery, or a laundry, not 
of a farm or factory. 'Tis an exclusion and a pre- 
cinct. Sidney Smith said, " A few yards in London 
cement or dissolve friendship." It is an unprincipled 
decorum; an affair of clean linen and coaches, of 
gloves, cards, and elegance in trifles. There are other 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY, 197 

mer.sures of self-respect for a man, than the number 
of clean shirts he puts on every day. Society wishes 
to be amused. I do not wish to be amused. I wish 
that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the 
days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we 
reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to 
be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure 
we are to taste. Is all we have to do to draw the 
breath in, and blow it out again ? Porphyry's defi- 
nition is better ; " Life is that which holds matter 
together." The babe in arms is a channel through 
which the energies we call fate, love, and reason, vis- 
ibly stream. See what a cometary train of auxiliaries 
man carries with him, of animals, plants, stones, gases, 
and imponderable elements. Let us infer his ends 
from this pomp of means. Mirabeau said, "Why 
should we feel ourselves to be men, unless it be to 
succeed in everything, everywhere. You must say 
of nothing, That is beneath 7?te, nor feel that any- 
thing can be out of your power. Nothing is impos- 
sible to the man who can will. Is that necessary? 
That shall be: — this is the only law of success." 
Whoever said it, this is in the right key. But this 
is not the tone and genius of the men in the street. 
In the streets, we grow cynical. The men we meet 
are coarse and torpid. The finest wits have their 
sediment. What quantities of fribbles, paupers, in- 
valids, epicures, antiquaries, politicians, thieves, and 
triflers of both sexes, might be advantageously spared ! 
Mankind divides itself into two classes, — benefactors 
and malefactors. The second class is vast, the first 
a handful. A person seldom falls sick, but the by- 



198 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

standers are animated with a faint hope that he will 
die: — quantities of poor lives; of distressing inva- 
lids ; of cases for a gun. Franklin said, " Mankind 
are very superficial and dastardly : they begin upon 
a thing, but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from 
it discouraged : but they have capacities, if they would 
employ them." Shall we then judge a country by the 
majority, or by the minority ? By the minority, surely. 
'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or 
by square miles of land, or other than by their impor- 
tance to the mind of the time. 

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. 
Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their 
demands and influence, and need not to be flattered 
but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything 
to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them 
up, and draw individuals out of them. The worst of 
charity is, that the lives you are asked to preserve are 
not worth preserving. Masses ! the calamity is the 
masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest 
men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, 
and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking 
million stockingers or lazzaroni at all. If govern- 
ment knew how, I should like to see it check, not 
multiply the population. When it reaches its true 
law of action, every man that is born will be hailed 
as essential. Away with this hurrah of masses, and 
let us have the considerate vote of single men spoken 
on their honor and their conscience. In old Egypt, 
it was established law, that the vote of a prophet be 
reckoned equal to a hundred hands. I think it was 
much under-estimated. " Clay and clay differ in dig- 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 199 

nity," as we discover by our preferences every day. 
What a vicious practice is this of our politicians at 
Washington pairing off ! as if one man who votes 
wrong, going away, could excuse you, who mean to 
vote right, for going away ; or, as if your presence 
did not tell in more ways than in your vote. Suppose 
the three hundred heroes at Thermopylae had paired 
off with three hundred Persians : would it have been 
all the same to Greece, and to history ? Napoleon 
was called by his men Cent Mille. Add honesty 
to him, and they might have called him Hundred 
Million. 

Nature makes fifty poor melons for one that is good, 
and shakes down a tree full of gnarled, wormy, unripe 
crabs, before you can find a dozen dessert apples ; 
and she scatters nations of naked Indians, and nations 
of clothed Christians, with two or three good heads 
among them. Nature works very hard, and only hits 
the white once in a million throws. In mankind, she 
is contented if she yields one master in a century. 
The more difficulty there is in creating good men, the 
more they are used when they come. I once counted 
in a little neighborhood, and found that every able- 
bodied man had, say from twelve to fifteen persons 
dependent on him for material aid, — to whom he is 
to be for spoon and jug, for backer and sponsor, for 
nursery and hospital, and many functions beside : nor 
does it seem to make much difference whether he is 
bachelor or patriarch ; if he do not violently decline 
the duties that fall to him, this amount of helpfulness 
will in one way or another be brought home to him. 
This is the tax which his abilities pay. The good 



200 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

men are employed for private centres of use, and for 
larger influence. All revelations, whether of mechani- 
cal or intellectual or moral science, are made not to 
communities, but to single persons. All the marked 
events of our day, all the cities, all the colonizations, 
may be traced back to their origin in a private brain. 
All the feats which make our civility were the thoughts 
of a few good heads. 

Meantime, this spawning productivity is not nox- 
ious or needless. You would say, this rabble of na- 
tions might be spared. But no, they are all counted 
and depended on. Fate keeps everything alive so 
long as the smallest thread of public necessity holds 
it on to the tree. The coxcomb and bully and thief 
class are allowed as proletaries, every one of their 
vices being the excess or acridity of a virtue. The 
mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee. 
But the units, whereof this mass is composed are neu- 
ters, every one of which may be grown to a queen-bee. 
The rule is, we are used as brute atoms, until we 
think : then, we use all the rest. Nature turns all 
malfaisance to good. Nature provided for real needs. 
No sane man at last distrusts himself. His existence 
is a perfect answer to all sentimental cavils. If he is, 
he is wanted, and has the precise properties that are 
required. That we are here, is proof we ought to be 
here. We have as good right, and the same sort of 
right to be here, as Cape Cod or Sandy Hook have to 
be there. 

To say then, the majority are wicked, means no 
malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simply, that 
the majority are unripe, and have not yet come to 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 201 

themselves, do not yet know their opinion. That., if 
they knew it, is an oracle for them and for all. But 
in the passing moment, the quadruped interest is very 
prone to prevail : and this beast-force, whilst it makes 
the discipline of the world, the school of heroes, the 
glory of martyrs, has provoked, in every age, the satire 
of wits, and the tears of good men. They find the 
journals, the clubs, the governments, the churches, 
to be in the interest, and the pay of the devil. And 
wise men have met this obstruction in their times, like 
Socrates, with his famous irony ; like Bacon, with life- 
long dissimulation ; like Erasmus, with his book "The 
Praise of Folly ; " like Rabelais, with his satire rend- 
ing the nations. "They were the fools who cried 
against me, you will say," wrote the Chevalier de Bouf- 
flers to Grimm; "aye, but the fools have the advan- 
tage of numbers, and 'tis that which decides, 'Tis of 
no use for us to make war with them ; we shall not 
weaken them ; they will always be the masters. There 
will not be a practice or an usage introduced, of which 
they are not the authors." 

In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of 
history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, 
but Bad is sometimes a better. 'Tis the oppressions 
of William the Norman, savage forest-laws, and crush- 
ing despotism, that made possible the inspirations of 
Magna Charta under John. Edward I. wanted money, 
armies, castles, and as much as he could get. It was 
necessary to call the people together by shorter, swifter 
ways, — and the House of Commons arose. To ob- 
tain subsidies, he paid in privileges. In the twenty- 
fourth year of his reign, he decreed, " that no tax 



2 02 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

should be levied without consent of Lords and Com- 
mons ; " — which is the basis of the English Consti- 
tution. Plutarch affirms that the cruel wars which 
followed the march of Alexander, introduced the 
civility, language, and arts of Greece into the savage 
East ; introduced marriage ; built seventy cities ; and 
united hostile nations under one government. The 
barbarians who broke up the Roman empire did not 
arrive a day too soon. Schiller says, the Thirty Years' 
War made Germany a nation. Rough, selfish despots 
serve men immensely, as Henry VIII. in the contest 
with the Pope ; as the infatuations no less than the 
wisdom of Cromwell ; as the ferocity of the Russian 
czars ; as the fanaticism of the French regicides of 
1789. The frost which kills the harvest of a year, 
saves the harvests of a century, by destroying the 
weevil or the locust. Wars, fires, plagues, break up 
immovable routine, clear the ground of rotten races 
and dens of distemper, and open a fair field to new 
men. There is a tendency in things to right them- 
selves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that 
shatters a rotten system, allows things to take a new 
and natural order. The sharpest evils are bent into 
that periodicity which makes the errors of planets, and 
the fevers and distempers of men, self-limiting. Na- 
ture is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, 
danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we 
have overcome. Without war, no soldier; without 
enemies, no hero. The sun were insipid, if the uni- 
verse were not opaque. And the glory of character 
is in affronting the horrors of depravity, to draw thence 
new nobilities of power : as Art lives and thrills in 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 203 

new use and combining of contrasts, and mining into 
the dark evermore for blacker pits of night. What 
would painter do, or what would poet or saint, but for 
crucifixions and hells? And evermore in the world 
is this marvellous balance of beauty and disgust, mag- 
nificence and rats. Not Antoninus, but a poor washer- 
woman said, " The more trouble, the more lion ; that's 
my principle." 

I do not think very respectfully of the designs or the 
doings of the people who went to California, in 1849. 
It was a rush and a scramble of needy adventurers, 
and, in the western country, a general jail-delivery of 
all the rowdies of the rivers. Some of them went 
with honest purposes, some with very bad ones, and 
all of them with the very commonplace wish to find 
a short way to wealth. But Nature watches over all, 
and turns this malfaisance to good. California gets 
peopled and subdued, — civilized in this immoral 
way, — and, on this fiction, a real prosperity is rooted 
and grown. Tis a decoy-duck; 'tis tubs thrown to 
amuse the whale: but real ducks, and whales that 
yield oil, are caught. And, out of Sabine rapes, and 
out of robbers' forays, real Romes and their heroisms 
come in fulness of time. 

In America, the geography is sublime, but the men 
are not : the inventions are excellent, but the invent- 
ors one is sometimes ashamed of. The agencies by 
which events so grand as the opening of California, 
of Texas, of Oregon, and the junction of the two 
oceans, are effected, are paltry, — coarse selfishness, 
fraud, and conspiracy : and most of the great results 
of history are brought about by discreditable means. 



204 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

The benefaction derived in Illinois, and the great 
West, from railroads is inestimable, and vastly ex- 
ceeding any intentional philanthropy on record. 
What is the benefit done by a good King Alfred, 
or by a Howard, or Pestalozzi, or Elizabeth Fry, or 
Florence Nightingale, or any lover, less or larger, 
compared with the involuntary blessing wrought on 
nations by the selfish capitalists who built the Illinois, 
Michigan, and the network of the Mississippi valley 
roads, which have evoked not only all the wealth of 
the soil, but the energy of millions of men, 'Tis a 
sentence of ancient wisdom, " that God hangs the 
greatest weights on the smallest wires." 

What happens thus to nations, befalls every day in 
private houses. When the friends of a gentleman 
brought to his notice the follies of his sons, with 
many hints of their danger, he repUed, that he knew 
so much mischief when he was a boy, and had turned 
out on the whole so successfully, that he was not 
alarmed by the dissipation of boys ; 'twas dangerous 
water, but, he thought, they would soon touch bottom, 
and then swim to the top. This is bold practice, and 
there are many failures to a good escape. Yet one 
would say, that a good understanding would suffice as 
well as moral sensibility to keep one erect ; the grati- 
fications of the passions are so quickly seen to be 
damaging, and, — what men like least, — seriously 
lowering them in social rank. Then all talent sinks 
with character. 

" Croyez inoi^ Verreur aussi a son inerite^'"'' said Vol- 
taire. We see those who surmount, by dint of some 
egotism or infatuation, obstacles from which the pru- 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 205 

dent recoil. The right partisan is a heady narrow 
man, who, because he does not see many things, sees 
some one thing with heat and exaggeration, and, if 
he falls among other narrow men, or on objects which 
have a brief importance, as some trade or politics of 
the hour, he prefers it to the universe, and seems in- 
spired, and a godsend to those who wish to magnify 
the matter, and carry a point. Better, certainly, if we 
could secure the strength and fire which rude, pas- 
sionate men bring into society, quite clear of their 
vices. But who dares draw out the linchpin from the 
Wagon-wheel ? 'Tis so manifest, that there is no moral 
deformity, but is a good passion out of place; that 
there is no man who is not indebted to his foibles ; 
that, according to the old oracle, " the Furies are the 
bonds of men ; " that the poisons are our principal 
medicines, which kill the disease, and save the life. 
In the high prophetic phrase, He causes the wrath of 
man to praise him, and twists and wrenches our evil 
to our good. Shakspeare wrote, — 

" 'Tis said, best men are moulded of their faults ; " 

and great educators and lawgivers, and especially 
generals, and leaders of colonies, mainly rely on 
this stuff, and esteem men of irregular and pas- 
sional force the best timber. A man of sense and 
energy, the late head of the Farm School in Boston 
harbor, said to me, " I want none of your good 
boys, — give me the bad ones." And this is the 
reason, I suppose, why, as soon as the children are 
good, the mothers are scared, and think they are 
going to die. Mirabeau said, " There are none but 



2o6 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

men of strong passions capable of going to great- 
ness ; none but such capable of meriting the public 
gratitude." Passion, though a bad regulator, is a 
powerful spring. Any absorbing passion has the 
effect to deliver from the little coils and cares of 
every day : 'tis the heat which sets our human 
atoms spinning, overcomes the friction of crossing 
thresholds, and first addresses in society, and gives 
us a good start and speed, easy to continue, when 
once it is begun. In short, there is no man who 
is not at some time indebted to his vices, as no 
plant that is not fed from manures. We only 
insist that the man meliorate, and that the plant 
grow upward, and convert the base into the better 
nature. 

The wise workman will not regret the poverty or 
the solitude which brought out his working talents. 
The youth is charmed with the fine air and accom- 
plishments of the children of fortune. But all great 
men come out of the middle classes. 'Tis better 
for the head; 'tis better for the heart. Marcus 
Antoninus says, that Fronto told him, " that the so- 
called high-born are for the most part heartless ; " 
whilst nothing is so indicative of deepest culture as 
a tender consideration of the ignorant. Charles 
James Fox said of England, " The history of this 
country proves, that we are not to expect from men 
in affluent circumstances the vigilance, energy, and 
exertion without which the House of Commons 
would lose its greatest force and weight. Human 
nature is prone to indulgence, and the most merito- 
rious public services have always been performed 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 207 

by persons in a condition of life removed from opu- 
lence." And yet what we ask daily, is to be con- 
ventional. Supply, most kind gods! this defect in 
my address, in my form, in my fortunes, which puts 
me a little out of the ring : supply it, and let me be 
like the rest whom I admire, and on good terms with 
them. But the wise gods say, No, we have better 
things for thee. By humiliations, by defeats, by loss 
of sympathy, by gulfs of disparity, learn a wider truth 
and humanity than that of a fine gentleman. A 
Fifth-Avenue landlord, a West-End householder, is 
not the highest style of man : and, though good 
hearts and sound minds are of no condition, yet he 
who is to be wise for many, must not be protected. 
He must know the huts where poor men lie, and the 
chores which poor men do. The first-class minds, 
^sop, Socrates, Cervantes, Shakspeare, Franklin, 
had the poor man's feeling and mortification. A 
rich man was never insulted in his life : but this 
man must be stung. A rich man was never in dan- 
ger from cold, or hunger, or war, or ruffians, and 
you can see he was not, from the moderation of 
his ideas. 'Tis a fatal disadvantage to be cockered, 
and to eat too much cake. What tests of manhood 
could he stand? Take him out of his protections. 
He is a good book-keeper ; or he is a shrewd ad- 
viser in the insurance office : perhaps he could pass 
a college examination, and take his degrees : perhaps 
he can give wise counsel in a court of law. Now 
plant him down among farmers, firemen, Indians, 
and emigrants. Set a dog on him : set a highway- 
man on him : try him with a course of mobs : send 



2o8 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

him to Kansas, to Pike's Peak, to Oregon : and, if 
he have true faculty, this may be the element he 
wants, and he will come out of it with broader wis- 
dom and manly power. ^Esop, Saadi, Cervantes, 
Regnard, have been taken by corsairs, left for dead, 
sold for slaves, and know the realities of human life. 

Bad times have a scientific value. These are 
occasions a good learner would not miss. As we 
go gladly to Faneuil Hall, to be played upon by the 
stormy winds and strong fingers of enraged patriot- 
ism, so is a fanatical persecution, civil war, national 
bankruptcy, or revolution, more rich in the central 
tones than languid years of prosperity. What had 
been, ever since our memory, solid continent, yawns 
apart, and discloses its composition and genesis. 
We learn geology the morning after the earthquake, 
on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved 
plains, and the dry bed of the sea. 

In our life and culture, everything is worked up, 
and comes in use, — passion, war, revolt, bankruptcy, 
and not less, folly and blunders, insult, ennui, and 
bad company. Nature is a rag-merchant, who works 
up every shred and ort and end into new creations ; 
like a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, 
in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure 
white sugar. Life is a boundless privilege, and when 
you pay for your ticket, and get into the car, you have 
no guess what good company you shall find there. 
You buy much that is not rendered in the bill. Men 
achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working 
to another aim. 

If now in this connection of discourse, we should 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 209 

venture on laying down the first obvious rules of 
life, I will not here repeat the first rule of economy, 
already propounded once and again, that every man 
shall maintain himself, — but I will say, get health. 
No labor, pains, temperance, poverty, nor exercise, 
that can gain it, must be grudged. For sickness is a 
cannibal which eats up all the life and youth it can 
lay hold of, and absorbs its own sons and daughters. 
I figure it as a pale, wailing, distracted phantom, abso- 
lutely selfish, heedless of what is good and great, 
attentive to its sensations, losing its soul, and afflict- 
ing other souls with meanness and mopings, and with 
ministration to its voracity of trifles. Dr. Johnson 
said severely, " Every man is a rascal as soon as he 
is sick." Drop the cant, and treat it sanely. In deal- 
ing with the drunken, we do not affect to be drunk. 
We must treat the sick with the same firmness, giving 
them, of course, every aid, — but withholding our- 
selves. I once asked a clergyman in a retired town, 
who were his companions? what men of ability he 
saw? he repHed, that he spent his time with the sick 
and the dying. I said, he seemed to me to need 
quite other company, and all the more that he had 
this : for if people were sick and dying to any pur- 
pose, we would leave all and go to them, but, as far 
as I had observed, they were as frivolous as the rest, 
and sometimes much more frivolous. Let us engage 
our companions not to spare us. I knew a wise woman 
who said to her friends, " When I am old, rule me." 
And the best part of health is fine disposition. It is 
more essential than talent, even in the works of talent. 
Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, 



2IO CONDUCT k)F LIFE. 

and, to make knowledge valuable, you must have the 
cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely 
pleased, you are nourished. The joy of the spirit 
indicates its strength. All healthy things are sweet- 
tempered. Genius works in sport, and goodness 
smiles to the last ; and, for the reason, that whoever 
sees the law which distributes things, does not de- 
spond, but is animated to great desires and endeavors. 
He who desponds betrays that he has not seen it. 

Tis a Dutch proverb, that " paint costs nothing," 
such are its preserving qualities in damp climates. 
Well, sunshine costs less, yet is finer pigment. And 
so of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is 
spent, the more of it remains. The latent heat of an 
ounce of wood or stone is inexhaustible. You may 
rub the same chip of pine to the point of kindling, 
a hundred times ; and the power of happiness of any 
soul is not to be computed or drained. It is observed 
that a depression of spirits develops the germs of a 
plague in individuals and nations. 

It is an old commendation of right behavior, " Aliis 
IcEtiis, sapiens sibi^'' which our English proverb trans- 
lates, "Be merry and wise." I know how easy it is 
to men of the world to look grave and sneer at your 
sanguine youth, and its glittering dreams. But I find 
the gayest castles in the air that were ever piled, far 
better for comfort and for use, than the dungeons in 
the air that are daily dug and caverned out by grum- 
bling, discontented people. I know those miserable 
fellows, and I hate them, who see a black star always 
riding through the light and colored clouds in the 
sky overhead : waves of light pass over and hide it 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 211 

for a moment, but the black star keeps fast in the 
zenith. But power dwells with cheerfulness ; hope 
puts us in a working mood, whilst despair is no muse, 
and untunes the active powers. A man should make 
life and Nature happier to us, or he had better never 
been born. When the political economist reckons up 
the unproductive classes, he should put at the head 
this class of pitiers of themselves, cravers of sym- 
pathy, bewailing imaginary disasters. An old French 
verse runs, in my translation : — 

Some of your griefs you have cured, 
And the sharpest you still have survived ; 

But what torments of pain you endured 
From evils that never arrived ! 

There are three wants which never can be satisfied : 
that of the rich, who wants something more ; that of 
the sick, who wants something different ; and that of 
the traveller, who says, " Anywhere but here." The 
Turkish cadi said to Layard, " After the fashion of 
thy people, thou hast wandered from one place to 
another, until thou art happy and content in none." 
My countrymen are not less infatuated with the rococo 
toy of Italy. All America seems on the point of em- 
barking for Europe. But we shall not always trav- 
erse seas and lands with light purposes, and for 
pleasure, as we say. One day we shall cast out 
the passion for Europe, by the passion for America. 
Culture will give gravity and domestic rest to those 
who now travel only as not knowing how else to 
spend money. Already, who provoke pity like that 
excellent family party just arriving in their well- 



212 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

appointed carriage, as far from home and any honest 
end as ever? Each nation has asked successively, 
" What are they here for ? " until at last the party are 
shamefaced, and anticipate the question at the gates 
of each town. 

Genial manners are good, and power of accommo- 
dation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, 
the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a 
bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment 
and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, or 
broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt 
not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pro- 
nounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, 
not apparently so. 

In childhood, we fancied ourselves walled in by the 
horizon, as by a glass bell, and doubted not, by dis- 
tant travel, we should reach the baths of the descend- 
ing sun and stars. On experiment, the horizon flies 
before us, and leaves us on an endless common, shel- 
tered by no glass bell. Yet 'tis strange how tena- 
ciously we cling to that bell-astronomy, of a protecting 
domestic horizon. I find the same illusion in the 
search after happiness, which I observe, every sum- 
mer, recommenced in this neighborhood, soon after 
the pairing of the birds. The young people do not 
like the town, do not like the sea-shore, they will go 
inland ; find a dear cottage deep in the mountains, 
secret as their hearts. They set forth on their travels 
in search of a home : they reach Berkshire ; they reach 
Vermont ; they look at the farms ; — good farms, high 
mountain-sides: but where is the seclusion? The 
farm is near this ; 'tis near that ; they have got far 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 213 

from Boston, but 'tis near Albany, or near Burlington, 
or near Montreal. They explore a farm, but the house 
is small, old, thin ; discontented people lived there, 
and are gone : — there's too much sky, too much out- 
doors ; too public. The youth aches for solitude. 
When he comes to the house, he passes through the 
house. That does not make the deep recess he 
sought. "Ah! now, I perceive," he says, "it must 
be deep with persons ; friends only can give depth." 
Yes, but there is a great dearth, this year, of friends ; 
hard to find, and hard to have when found : they are 
just going away : they too are in the whirl of the flit- 
ting world, and have engagements and necessities. 
They are just starting for Wisconsin ; have letters 
from Bremen : — see you again, soon. Slow, slow to 
learn the lesson, that there is but one depth, but one 
interior, and that is — his purpose. When joy or 
calamity or genius shall show him it, then woods, then 
farms, then city shopmen and cab-drivers, indifferently 
with prophet or friend, will mirror back to him its 
unfathomable heaven, its populous solitude. 

The uses of travel are occasional, and short ; but 
the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation ; 
and this is a main function of life. What a difference 
in the hospitality of minds! Inestimable is he to 
whom we can say what we cannot say to ourselves. 
Others are involuntarily hurtful to us, and bereave us 
of the power of thought, impound and imprison us. 
As, when there is sympathy, there needs but one wise 
man in a company, and all are wise, — so, a block- 
head makes a blockhead of his companion. Wonder- 
ful power to benumb possesses this brother. When 



214 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

he comes into the office or public room, the society 
dissolves ; one after another slips out, and the apart- 
ment is at his disposal. What is incurable but a 
frivolous habit? A fly is as untamable as a hyena. 
Yet folly in the sense of fun, fooling, or dawdling can 
easily be borne ; as Talleyrand said, " I find nonsense 
singularly refreshing ; " but a virulent, aggressive fool 
taints the reason of a household. I have seen a whole 
family of quiet, sensible people unhinged and beside 
themselves, victims of such a rogue. For the steady 
wrongheadedness of one perverse person irritates the 
best : since we must withstand absurdity. But re- 
sistance only exasperates the acrid fool, who believes 
that Nature and gravitation are quite wrong, and he 
only is right. Hence all the dozen inmates are soon 
perverted, with whatever virtues and industries they 
have, into contradictors, accusers, explainers, and re- 
pairers of this one malefactor ; like a boat about to be 
overset, or a carriage run away with, — not only the 
foolish pilot or driver, but everybody on board is 
forced to assume strange and ridiculous attitudes, to 
balance the vehicle and prevent the upsetting. For 
remedy, whilst the case is yet mild, I recommend 
phlegm and truth : let all the truth that is spoken or 
done be at the zero of indifferency, or truth itself will 
be folly. But, when the case is seated and malignant, 
the only safety is in amputation ; as seamen say, you 
shall cut and run. How to live with unfit compan- 
ions? — for, with such, life is for the most part spent: 
and experience teaches little better than our earliest 
instinct of self-defence, namely, not to engage, not to 
mix yourself in any manner with them ; but let their 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 215 

madness spend itself unopposed ; — you are you, and 
I am I. 

Conversation is an art in which a man has all man- 
kind for his competitors, for it is that which all are 
practising every day while they live. Our habit of 
thought, — take men as they rise, — is not satisfying; 
in the common experience, I fear, it is poor and squalid. 
The success which will content them, is, a bargain, 
a lucrative employment, an advantage gained over a 
competitor, a marriage, a patrimony, a legacy, and 
the like. With these objects, their conversation deals 
with surfaces : politics, trade, personal defects, exag- 
gerated bad news, and the rain. This is forlorn, and 
they feel sore and sensitive. Now, if one comes who 
can illuminate this dark house with thoughts, show 
them their native riches, what gifts they have, how 
indispensable each is, what magical powers over 
nature and men ; what access to poetry, religion, and 
the powers which constitute character ; he wakes in 
them the feeling of worth, his suggestions require new 
ways of living, new books, new men, new arts and 
sciences, — then we come out of our egg-shell exist- 
ence into the great dome, and see the zenith over 
and the nadir under us. Instead of the tanks and 
buckets of knowledge to which we are daily confined, 
we come down to the shore of the sea, and dip our 
hands in its miraculous waves. 'Tis wonderful the 
effect on the company. They are not the men they 
were. They have all been to California, and all have 
come back millionnaires. There is no book and no 
pleasure in life comparable to it. Ask what is best in 
our experience, and we shall say, a few pieces of plain- 



2i6 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

dealing with wise people. Our conversation once and 
again has apprised us that we belong to better circles 
than we have yet beheld ; that a mental power invites 
us, whose generalizations are more worth for joy and 
for effect than anything that is now called philosophy 
or literature. In excited conversation, we have 
glimpses of the Universe, hints of power native to the 
soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an Andes 
landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone med- 
itation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely given, 
to which the memory goes back in barren hours. 

Add the consent of will and temperament, and 
there exists the covenant of friendship. Our chief 
want in life, is, somebody who shall make us do what 
we can. This is the service of a friend. With him 
we are easily great. There is a sublime attraction in 
him to whatever virtue is in us. How he flings wide 
the doors of existence! What questions we ask of 
him! What an understanding we have! how few 
words are needed! It is the only real society. An 
Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad 
truth, — 

" He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, 
And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere." 

But few writers have said anything better to this 
point than Hafiz, who indicates this relation as the 
test of mental health : " Thou learnest no secret 
until thou knowest friendship, since to the unsound 
no heavenly knowledge enters." Neither is life long 
enough for friendship. That is a serious and majestic 
affair, like a royal presence, or a religion, and not a 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 217 

postilion's dinner to be eaten on the run. There is 
a pudency about friendship, as about love, and though 
fine souls never lose sight of it, yet they do not name 
it. With the first class of men our friendship or 
good understanding goes quite beliind all accidents of 
estrangement, of condition, of reputation. And yet 
we do not provide for the greatest good of life. We 
take care of our health ; we lay up money ; we make 
our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient ; but who 
provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the 
best property of all, — friends? We know that all 
our training is to fit us for this, and we do not take 
the step towards it. How long shall we sit and wait 
for these benefactors? 

It makes no difference, in looking back five years, 
how you have been dieted or dressed ; whether you 
have been lodged on the first floor or the attic; 
whether you have had gardens and baths, good cattle 
and horses, have been carried in a neat equipage, or 
in a ridiculous truck : these things are forgotten so 
quickly, and leave no effect. But it counts much 
whether we have had good companions, in that time ; 
— almost as much as what we have been doing. And 
see the overpowering importance of neighborhood in 
all association. As it is marriage, fit or unfit, that 
makes our home, so it is who lives near us of equal 
social degree, — a few people at convenient distance, 
no matter how bad company, — these, and these only, 
shall be your life's companions : and all those who 
are native, congenial, and by many an oath of the 
heart, sacramented to you, are gradually and totally 
lost. You cannot deal systematically with this fine 



2l8 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

element of society, and one may take a good deal of 
pains to bring people together, and to organize clubs 
and debating societies, and yet no result come of it. 
But it is certain that there is a great deal of good in 
us that does not know itself, and that a habit of union 
and competition brings people up and keeps them up 
to their highest point ; that life would be twice or ten 
times life, if spent with wise and fruitful companions. 
The obvious inference is, a little useful deliberation 
and preconcert, when one goes to buy house and 
land. 

But we live with people on other platforms ; we live 
with dependents, not only with the young whom we 
are to teach all we know, and clothe with the advan- 
tages we have earned, but also with those who serve 
us directly, and for m.oney. Yet the old rules hold 
good. Let not the tie be mercenary, though the 
service is measured by money. Make yourself neces- 
sary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any. 
This point is acquiring new importance in American 
social life. Our domestic service is usually a foolish 
fracas of unreasonable demand on one side, and shirk- 
ing on the other. A man of wit was asked, in the 
train, what was his errand in the city ? He replied, 
" I have been sent to procure an angel to do cooking." 
A lady complained to me, that, of her two maidens, 
one was absent-minded, and the other was absent- 
bodied. And the evil increases from the ignorance 
and hostility of every ship-load of the immigrant 
population swarming into houses and farms. Few 
people discern that it rests with the master or the mis- 
tress what service comes from the man or the maid ; 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 219 

that this identical hussy was a tutelar spirit in one 
house, and a haridan in the other. All sensible 
people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every con- 
tract to make the terms of it fair. If you are propos- 
ing only your own, the other party must deal a little 
hardly by you. If you deal generously, the other, 
though selfish and unjust, will make an exception in 
your favor, and deal truly with you. When I asked 
an iron-master about the slag and cinder in railroad 
iron, — " O," he said, " there's always good iron to 
be had: if there's cinder in the iron, 'tis because 
there was cinder in the pay." 

But why multiply these topics, and their illustra- 
tions, which are endless? Life brings to each his 
task, and, whatever art you select, algebra, planting, 
architecture, poems, commerce, politics, — all are at- 
tainable, even to the miraculous triumphs, on the same 
terms, of selecting that for which you are apt ; — begin 
at the beginning, proceed in order, step by step. 'Tis 
as easy to twist iron anchors, and braid cannons, as 
to braid straw, to boil granite as to boil water, if you 
take all the steps in order. Wherever there is fail- 
ure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about 
luck, some step omitted, which Nature never pardons. 
The happy conditions of life may be had on the same 
terms. Their attraction for you is the pledge that 
they are within your reach. Our prayers are prophets. 
There must be fidelity, and there must be adherence. 
How respectable the life that cHngs to its objects! 
Youthful aspirations are fine things, your theories and 
plans of life are fair and commendable : — but will you 
stick? Not one, I fear, in that Common full of peo- 



220 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

pie, or, in a thousand^ but one: and, when you tax 
them with treachery, and remind them of their high 
resolutions, they have forgotten that they made a vow. 
The individuals are fugitive, and in the act of becom- 
ing something else, and irresponsible. The race is 
great, the ideal fair, but the men whiffling and unsure. 
The hero is he who is immovably centred. The main 
dilference between people seems to be, that one man 
can come under obligations on which you can rely, — 
is obligable ; and another is not. As he has not a law 
within him, there's nothing to tie him to. 

'Tis inevitable to name particulars of virtue, and of 
condition, and to exaggerate them. But all rests at 
last on that integrity which dwarfs talent, and can 
spare it. Sanity consists in not being subdued by 
your means. Fancy prices are paid for position, and 
for the culture of talent, but to the grand interests, 
superficial success is of no account. The man, — it 
is his attitude, — not feats, but forces, — not on set 
days and public occasions, but, at all hours, and in 
repose alike as in energy, still formidable, and not to 
be disposed of. The populace says, with Home Tooke, 
" If you would be powerful, pretend to be powerful." 
I prefer to say, with the old prophet, " Seekest thou 
great things ? seek them not : " — or, what was said 
of a Spanish prince, " The more you took from him, 
the greater he looked." Plus on ltd die, plus il est 
grand. 

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great 
points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the 
obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan 
life, and that these few are alone to be regarded, — 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 221 

the escape from all false ties ; courage to be what 
we are ; and love of what is simple and beautiful ; 
independence, and cheerful relation, these are the 
essentials, — these, and the wish to serve, — to add 
somewhat to the well-being of men. 



VIII. 
BEAUTY. 



Was never form and never face 
So sweet to Seyd as only grace 
Which did not slumber like a stone 
But hovered gleaming and was gone. 
Beauty chased he everywhere, 
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 
He smote the lake to feed his eye 

With the beryl beam of the broken wave ; 
He flung in pebbles well to hear 

The moment's music which they gave. 
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone 
From nodding pole and belting zone. 
He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centred and from errant sphere. 
The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, 
Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. 
In dens of passion, and pits of wo. 
He saw strong Eros struggling through. 
To sun the dark and solve the curse, 
And beam to the bounds of the universe. 
While thus to love he gave his days 
In loyal worship, scorning praise. 
How spread their lures for him, in vain. 
Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain ! 
He thought it happier to be dead, 
To die for Beauty, than live for bread. 



BEAUTY. 

The spiral tendency of vegetation infects education 
also. Our books approach very slowly the things we 
most wish to know. What a parade we make of our 
science, and how far off, and at arm's length, it is 
from its objects! Our botany is all names, not 
powers : poets and romancers talk of herbs of grace 
and healing ; but what does the botanist know of the 
virtues of his weeds? The geologist lays bare the 
strata, and can tell them all on his fingers : but does 
he know what effect passes into the man who builds 
his house in them? What effect on the race that 
inhabits a granite shelf ? what on the inhabitants of 
marl and of alluvium? 

We should go to the ornithologist with a new feel- 
ing, if he could teach us what the social birds say, 
when they sit in the autumn council, talking together 
in the trees. The want of sympathy makes his record 
a dull dictionary. His result is a dead bird. The 
bird is not in its ounces and inches, but in its rela- 
tions to Nature ; and the skin or skeleton you show 
me, is no more a heron, than a heap of ashes or a 
bottle of gases into which his body has been reduced, 
is Dante or Washington. The naturalist is \&difro7n 
the road by the whole distance of his fancied advance. 
The boy had juster views when he gazed at the shells 
on the beach, or the flowers in the meadow, unable to 
225 



2 26 . CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

call them by their names, than the man in the pride 
of his nomenclature. Astrology interested us, for it 
tied man to the system. Instead of an isolated beg- 
gar, the farthest star felt him, and he felt the star. 
However rash and however falsified by pretenders 
and traders in it, the hint was true and divine, the 
soul's avowal of its large relations, and, that climate, 
century, remote natures, as well as near, are part of its 
biography. Chemistry takes to pieces, but it does 
not construct. Alchemy which sought to transmute 
one element into another, to prolong life, to arm with 
power, — that was in the right direction. All our 
science lacks a human side. The tenant is more than 
the house. Bugs and stamens and spores, on which we 
lavish so many years, are not finalities, and man, when 
his powers unfold in order, will take Nature along 
with him, and emit light into all her recesses. The 
human heart concerns us more than the pouring into 
microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by 
the pompous figures of the astronomer. 

We are just so frivolous and skeptical. Men hold 
themselves cheap and vile : and yet a man is a fagot 
of thunderbolts. All the elements pour through his 
system : he is the flood of the flood, and fire of the 
fire ; he feels the antipodes and the pole, as drops of 
his blood : they are the extension of his personality. 
His duties are measured by that instrument he is ; 
and a right and perfect man would be felt to the 
centre of the Copernican system. 'Tis curious that 
we only believe as deep as we live. We do not think 
heroes can exert any more awful power than that 
surface-play which amuses us. A deep man believes 



BEAUTY. 227 

in miracles, waits for them, believes in magic, believes 
that the orator will decompose his adversary ; believes 
that the evil eye can wither, that the heart's blessing 
can heal ; that love can exalt talent ; can overcome all 
odds. From a great heart secret magnetisms flow in- 
cessantly to draw great events. But we prize very hum- 
ble utilities, a prudent husband, a good son, a voter, a 
citizen, and deprecate any romance of character ; and 
perhaps reckon only his money value, — his intellect, 
his affection, as a sort of bill of exchange, easily con- 
vertible into fine chambers, pictures, music, and wine. 
The motive of science was the extension of man, 
on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch 
the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears 
understand the language of beast and bird, and the 
sense of the wind ; and, through his sympathy, heaven 
and earth should talk with him. But that is not our 
science. These geologies, chemistries, astronomies, 
seem to make wise, but they leave us where they 
found us. The invention is of use to the inventor, of 
questionable help to any other. The formulas of 
science are like the papers in your pocket-book, of no 
value to any but the owner. Science in England, in 
America, is jealous of theory, hates the name of love 
and moral purpose. There's a revenge for this in- 
humanity. What manner of man does science make? 
The boy is not attracted. He says, I do not wish to 
be such a kind of man as my professor is. The col- 
lector has dried all the plants in his herbal, but he has 
lost weight and humor. He has got all snakes and 
lizards in his phials, but science has done for him 
also, and has put the man into a bottle. Our reliance 



2 28 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

on the physician is a kind of despair of ourselves. 
The clergy have bronchitis, which does not seem a 
certificate of spiritual health. Macready thought it 
came of the falsetto of their voicing. An Indian 
prince, Tisso, one day riding in the forest, saw a herd 
of elk sporting. " See how happy," he said, " these 
browsing elks are ! Why should not priests, lodged 
and fed comfortably in the temples, also amuse 
themselves ? " Returning home, he imparted this 
reflection to the king. The king, on the next day, 
conferred the sovereignty on him, saying, " Prince, 
administer this empire for seven days : at the termina- 
tion of that period, I shall put thee to death." At 
the end of the seventh day, the king inquired " From 
what cause hast thou become so emaciated?" He 
answered, " From the horror of death." The monarch 
rejoined : " Live, my child, and be wise. Thou hast 
ceased to take recreation, saying to thyself, in seven 
days I shall be put to death. These priests in the 
temple incessantly meditate on death ; how can they 
enter into healthful diversions?" But the men of 
science or the doctors or the clergy are not victims 
of their pursuits, more than others. The miller, the 
lawyer, and the merchant, dedicate themselves to 
their own details, and do not come out men of more 
force. Have they divination, grand aims, hospitality 
of soul, and the equality to any event, which we de- 
mand in man, or only the reactions of the mill, of the 
wares, of the chicane? 

No object really interests us but man, and in man 
only his superiorities ; and, though we are aware of a 
perfect law in Nature, it has fascination for us only 



BEAUTY. 229 

through its relation to him, or, as it is rooted in the 
mind. At the birth of Winckehnann, more than a 
hundred years ago, side by side with this arid, depart- 
mental, post mortem science, rose an enthusiasm in 
the study of Beauty ; and perhaps some sparks from 
it may yet hght a conflagration in the other. Knowl- 
edge of men, knowledge of manners, the power of 
form, and our sensibility to personal influence, never 
go out of fashion. These are facts of a science which 
we study without book, whose teachers and subjects 
are always near us. 

So inveterate is our habit of criticism, that much of 
our knowledge in this direction belongs to the chapter 
of pathology. The crowd in the street oftener fur- 
nishes degradations than angels or redeemers : but 
they all prove the transparency. Every spirit makes 
its house ; and we can give a shrewd guess from the 
house to the inhabitant. But not less does Nature 
furnish us with every sign of grace and goodness. 
The delicious faces of children, the beauty of school- 
girls, " the sweet seriousness of sixteen," the lofty air 
of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate histories 
in the looks and manners of youth and early man- 
hood, and the varied power in all that well-known 
company that escort us through life, — we know how 
these forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and 
enlarge us. 

Beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers 
to study the world. All privilege is that of beauty; 
for there are many beauties ; as, of general nature, of 
the human face and form, of manners, of brain, or 
method, moral beauty, or beauty of the soul. 



230 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

The ancients believed that a genius or demon took 
possession at birth of each mortal, to guide him ; that 
these genii were sometimes seen as a flame of fire 
partly immersed in the bodies which they governed ; 
— on an evil man, resting on his head ; in a good 
man, mixed with his substance. They thought the 
same genius, at the death of its ward, entered a new- 
born child, and they pretended to guess the pilot, by 
the sailing of the ship. We recognize obscurely the 
same fact, though we give it our own names. We 
say, that every man is entitled to be valued by his 
best moment. We measure our friends so. We know, 
they have intervals of folly, whereof we take no heed, 
but wait the reappearings of the genius, which are 
sure and beautiful. On the other side, everybody 
knows people who appear beridden, and who, with 
all degrees of ability, never impress us with the air of 
free agency. They know it too, and peep with their 
eyes to see if you detect their sad plight. We fancy, 
could we pronounce the solving word, and disen- 
chant them, the cloud would roll up, the little rider 
would be discovered and unseated, and they would 
regain their freedom. The remedy seems never to 
be far off, since the first step into thought lifts this 
mountain of necessity. Thought is the pent air-ball 
which can rive the planet, and the beauty which cer- 
tain objects have for him, is the friendly fire which 
expands the thought, and acquaints the prisoner that 
liberty and power await him. 

The question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, to 
thinking of the foundations of things. Goethe said, 
" The beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of 



BEAUTY. 231 

Nature, which, but for this appearance, had been for- 
ever concealed from us." And the working of this 
deep instinct makes ail the excitement — much of it 
superficial and absurd enough — about works of art, 
which leads armies of vain travellers every year to 
Italy, Greece, and Egypt. Every man values every 
acquisition he makes in the science of beauty, above 
his possessions. The most useful man in the most 
useful world, so long as only commodity was served, 
would remain unsatisfied. But, as fast as he sees 
beauty, life acquires a very high value. 

. I am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers 
not to attempt a definition of Beauty. I will rather 
enumerate a few of its qualities. We ascribe beauty 
to that which is simple ; which has no superfluous 
parts ; which exactly answers its end ; which stands 
related to all things ; which is the mean of many 
extremes. It is the most enduring quality, and the 
most ascending quality. We say, love is blind, and 
the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage round 
his eyes. Blind: — yes, because he does not see 
what he does not like; but the sharpest-sighted 
hunter in the universe is Love, for finding what he 
seeks, and only that; and the mythologists tell us, 
that Vulcan was painted lame, and Cupid blind, to 
call attention to the fact, that one was all limbs, and 
the other, all eyes. In the true mythology, Love is 
an immortal child, and Beauty leads him as a guide : 
nor can we express a deeper sense than when we say, 
Beauty is the pilot of the young soul. 

Beyond their sensuous delight, the forms and 
colors of Nature have a new charm for us in our per- 



232 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

ception, that not one ornament was added for orna- 
ment, but is a sign of some better health, or more 
excellent action. Elegance of form in bird or beast, 
or in the human figure, marks some excellence of 
structure : or beauty is only an invitation from what 
belongs to us. 'Tis a law of botany, that in plants, 
the same virtues follow the same forms. It is a rule 
of largest application, true in a plant, true in a loaf of 
bread, that in the construction of any fabric or or- 
ganism, any real increase of fitness to its end is an 
increase of beauty. 

The lesson taught by the study of Greek and of 
Gothic art, of antique and of Pre-Raphaelite painting, 
was worth all the research, — namely, that all beauty 
must be organic ; that outside embellishment is de- 
formity. It is the soundness of the bones that ulti- 
mates itself in a peach-bloom complexion : health of 
constitution that makes the sparkle and the power of 
the eye. 'Tis the adjustment of the size and of the 
joining of the sockets of the skeleton, that gives grace 
of outline and the finer grace of movement. The cat 
and the deer cannot move or sit inelegantly. The 
dancing- master can never teach a badly built man to 
walk well. The tint of the flower proceeds from its 
root, and the lustres of the sea-shell begin with its 
existence. Hence our taste in building rejects paint, 
and all shifts, and shows the original grain of the 
wood : refuses pilasters and columns that support 
nothing, and allows the real supporters of the house 
honestly to show themselves. Every necessary or 
organic action pleases the beholder. A man leading 
a horse to water, a farmer sowing seed, the labors of 



BEAUTY, 233 

haymakers in the field, the carpenter building a ship, 
the smith at his forge, or, whatever useful labor, is 
becoming to the wise eye. But if it is done to be 
seen, it is mean. How beautiful are ships on the sea! 
but ships in the theatre, — or ships kept for pictur- 
esque effect on Virginia Water, by George IV., and 
men hired to stand in fitting costumes at a penny an 
hour! — What a difference in effect between a bat- 
talion of troops marching to action, and one of our 
independent companies on a holiday! In the midst 
of a mihtary show, and a festal procession gay with 
banners, I saw a boy seize an old tin pan that lay 
rusting under a wall, and poising it on the top of a 
stick, he set it turning, and made it describe the most 
elegant imaginable curves, and drew away attention 
from the decorated procession by this startling beauty. 
Another text from the mythologists. The Greeks 
fabled that Venus was born of the foam of the sea. 
.Nothing interests us which is stark or bounded, but 
only what streams with life, what is in act or endeavor 
to reach somewhat beyond. The pleasure a palace 
or a temple gives the eye, is, that an order and 
method has been communicated to stones, so that 
they speak and geometrize, become tender or sublime 
with expression. Beauty is the moment of transition, 
as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms. 
Any fixedness, heaping, or concentration on one fea- 
ture, — a long nose, a sharp chin, a hump-back, — is 
the reverse of the flowing, and therefore deformed. 
Beautiful as is the symmetry of any form, if the form 
can move, we seek a more excellent symmetry. The 
interruption of equilibrium stimulates the eye to desire 



234 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

the restoration of symmetry, and to watch the steps 
through which it is attained. This is the charm of 
running water, sea-waves, the flight of birds, and the 
locomotion of animals. This is the theory of dancing, 
to recover continually in changes the lost equilibrium, 
not by abrupt and angular, but by gradual and curving 
movements. I have been told by persons of experi- 
ence in matters of taste, that the fashions follow a law 
of gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new mode 
is always only a step onward in the same direction as 
the last mode ; and a cultivated eye is prepared for 
and predicts the new fashion. This fact suggests the 
reason of all mistakes and offence in our own modes. 
It is necessary in music, when you strike a discord, to 
let down the ear by an intermediate note or two to 
the accord again : and many a good experiment, born 
of good sense, and destined to succeed, fails, only 
because it is offensively sudden. I suppose, the Pa- 
risian milliner who dresses the world from her imperi- 
ous boudoir will know how to reconcile the Bloomer 
costume to the eye of mankind, and make it trium- 
phant over Punch himself, by interposing the just 
gradations. I need not say, how wide the same law 
ranges ; and how much it can jbe hoped to effect. All 
that is a little harshly claimed by progressive parties, 
may easily come to be conceded without question, if 
this rule be observed. Thus the circumstances may 
be easily imagined, in which woman may speak, vote, 
argue causes, legislate, and drive a coach, and all the 
most naturally in the world, if only it come by de- 
grees. To this streaming or flowing belongs the 
beauty that all circular movement has ; as, the circu- 



BEAUTY. 235 

lation of waters, the circulation of the blood, the 
periodical motion of planets, the annual wave of 
vegetation, the action and reaction of Nature : and, 
if we follow it out, this demand in our thought for 
an ever-onward action, is the argument for the im- 
mortality. 

One more text from the mythologists is to the 
same purpose, — Beauty rides on a lion. Beauty 
rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result 
of perfect economy. The cell of the bee is built at 
that angle which gives the most strength with the 
least wax ; the bone or the quill of the bird gives 
the most alar strength, with the least weight. " It is 
the purgation of superfluities," said Michel Angelo. 
There is not a particle to spare in natural structures. 
There is a compelling reason in the uses of the plant, 
for every novelty of color or form : and our art saves 
material, by more skilful arrangement, and reaches 
beauty by taking every superfluous ounce that can be 
spared from a wall, and keeping all its strength in the 
poetry of columns. In rhetoric, this art of omission 
is a chief secret of power, and, in general, it is proof 
of high culture, to say the greatest matters in the 
simplest way. 

Veracity first of all, and forever. Rien de beau que 
le vrai. In all design, art lies in making your object 
prominent, but there is a prior art in choosing ob- 
jects that are prominent. The fine arts have nothing 
casual, but spring from the instincts of the nations 
that created them. 

Beauty is the quality which makes to endure. In 
a house that I know, I have noticed a block of 



236 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

spermaceti lying about closets and mantel-pieces, for 
twenty years together, simply because the tallow-man 
gave it the form of a rabbit ; and, I suppose, it may 
continue to be lugged about unchanged for a century. 
Let an artist scrawl a few lines or figures on the back 
of a letter, and that scrap of paper is rescued from 
danger, is put in portfolio, is framed and glazed, and, 
in proportion to the beauty of the lines drawn, will 
be kept for centuries. Burns writes a copy of verses, 
and sends them to a newspaper, and the human race 
take charge of them that they shall not perish. 

As the flute is heard farther than the cart, see how 
surely a beautiful form strikes the fancy of men, and 
is copied and reproduced without end. How many 
copies are there of the Belvedere Apollo, the Venus, 
the Psyche, the Warwick Vase, the Parthenon, and 
the Temple of Vesta ? These are objects of tender- 
ness to all. In our cities, an ugly building is soon 
removed, and is never repeated, but any beautiful 
building is copied and improved upon, so that all 
masons and carpenters work to repeat and preserve 
the agreeable forms, whilst the ugly ones die out. 

The fehcities of design in art, or in works of 
Nature, are shadows or forerunners of that beauty 
which reaches its perfection in the human form. 
All men are its lovers. Wherever it goes, it creates 
joy and hilarity, and everything is permitted to it. 
It reaches its height in woman. "To Eve," say the 
Mahometans, "God gave two-thirds of all beauty." A 
beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her sav- 
age mate, planting tenderness, hope, and eloquence, 
in all whom she approaches. Some favors of con- 



BEAUTY. 237 

dition must go with it, since a certain serenity is 
essential, but we love its reproofs and superiorities. 
Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet 
she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sar- 
casm, which seems to say, " Yes, I am willing to attract, 
but to atfract a little better kind of a man than any I 
yet behold." French memoires of the fifteenth cen- 
tury celebrate the name of Pauline de Viguiere, a vir- 
tuous and accomplished maiden, who so fired the 
enthusiasm of her contemporaries, by her enchanting 
form, that the citizens of her native city of Toulouse 
obtained the aid of the civil authorities to compel her 
to appear publicly on the balcony at least twice a 
week, and, as often as she showed herself, the crowd 
was dangerous to life. Not less, in England, in the 
last century, was the fame of the Gunnings, of whom, 
Elizabeth married the Duke of Hamilton ; and Maria, 
the Earl of Coventry. Walpole says, " the concourse 
was so great, when the Duchess of Hamilton was 
presented at court, on Friday, that even the noble 
crowd in the drawing-room clambered on chairs and 
tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors 
to see them get into their chairs, and people go early 
to get places at the theatres, when it is known they 
will be there." " Such crowds," he adds, elsewhere, 
"flock to see the Duchess of Hamilton, that seven 
hundred people sat up all night, in and about an inn, 
in Yorkshire, to see her get into her post-chaise next 
morning." 

But why need we console ourselves with the fames 
of Helen of Argos, or Corinna, or Pauline of Tou- 
louse, or the Duchess of Hamilton? We all know 



238 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

this magic very well, or can divine it. It does not 
hurt weak eyes to look into beautiful eyes never 
so long. Women stand related to beautiful Nature 
around us, and the enamored youth mixes their form 
with moon and stars, with woods and waters, and the 
pomp of summer. They heal us of awkwardness by 
their words and looks. We observe their intellectual 
influence on the most serious student. They refine 
and clear his mind; teach him to put a pleasing 
method into what is dry and difficult. We talk to 
them, and wish to be listened to ; we fear to fatigue 
them, and acquire a facility of expression which passes 
from conversation into habit of style. 

That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the 
perpetual effort of Nature to attain it. Mirabeau had 
an ugly face on a handsome ground ; and we see 
faces every day which have a good type, but have 
been marred in the casting : a proof that we are all 
entitled to beauty, should have been beautiful, if our 
ancestors had kept the laws, — as every lily and every 
rose is well. But our bodies do not fit us, but cari- 
cature and satirize us. Thus, short legs, which con- 
strain us to short, mincing steps, are a kind of personal 
insult and contumely to the owner; and long stilts, 
again, put him at perpetual disadvantage, and force 
him to stoop to the general level of mankind. Mar- 
tial ridicules a gentleman of his day whose counte- 
nance resembled the face of a swimmer seen under 
water. Saadi describes a schoolmaster " so ugly and 
crabbed, that a sight of him would derange the ec- 
stasies of the orthodox." Faces are rarely true to 
any ideal type, but are a record in sculpture of a thou- 



BEAUTY. 239 

sand anecdotes of whim and folly. Portrait painters 
say that most faces and forms are irregular and un- 
symmetrical ; have one eye blue, and one gray ; the 
nose not straight ; and one shoulder higher than 
another ; the hair unequally distributed, etc. The 
man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing 
of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good 
and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start. 

A beautiful person, among the Greeks, was thought 
to betray by this sign some secret favor of the im- 
mortal gods : and we can pardon pride, when a 
woman possesses such a figure, that wherever she 
stands, or moves, or leaves a shadow on the wall, or 
sits for a portrait to the artist, she confers a favor on 
the world. And yet — it is not beauty that inspires 
the deepest passion. Beauty without grace is the 
hook without the bait. Beauty, without expression, 
tires. Abbe Manage said of the President Le Bail- 
leul, "that he was fit for nothing but to sit for his 
portrait." A Greek epigram intimates that the force 
of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but 
when the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill- 
favored. And petulant old gentlemen, who have 
chanced to suffer some intolerable weariness from 
pretty people, or who have seen cut flowers to some 
profusion, or who see, after a world of pains have 
been successfully taken for the costume, how the least 
mistake in sentiment takes all the beauty out of your 
clothes, — affirm, that the secret of ughness consists 
not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting. 

We love any forms, however ugly, from which 
great qualities shine. If command, eloquence, art, or 



240 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

invention, exist in the most deformed person, all the 
accidents that usually displease, please, and raise 
esteem and wonder higher. The great orator was an 
emaciated, insignificant person, but he was all brain. 
Cardinal De Retz says of De Bouillon, "With the 
physiognomy of an ox, he had the perspicacity of an 
eagle." It was said of Hooke, the friend of Newton, 
" he is the most, and promises the least, of any 
man in England." "Since I am so ugly," said Du 
Guesclin, "it behooves that I be bold." Sir Philip 
Sidney, the darling of mankind, Ben Jonson tells us, 
" was no pleasant man in countenance, his face being 
spoiled with pimples, and of high blood, and long." 
Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, 
for thousands of years, were not handsome men. If 
a man can raise a small city to be a great kingdom, 
can make bread cheap, can irrigate deserts, can join 
oceans by canals, can subdue steam, can organize 
victory, can lead the opinions of mankind, can en- 
large knowledge, 'tis no matter whether his nose is 
parallel to his spine, as it ought to be, or whether he 
has a nose at all ; whether his legs are straight, or 
whether his legs are amputated ; his deformities will 
come to be reckoned ornamental, and advantageous 
on the whole. This is the triumph of expression, 
degrading beauty, charming us with a power so fine 
and friendly and intoxicating, that it makes admired 
persons insipid, and the thought of passing our lives 
with them insupportable. There are faces so fluid 
with expression, so flushed and rippled by the play 
of thought, that we can hardly find what the mere 
features really are. When the delicious beauty of 



BEAUTY. 241 

lineaments loses its power, it is because a more de- 
licious beauty has appeared; that an interior and 
durable form has been disclosed. Still, Beauty rides 
on her lion, as before. Still, " it was for beauty that 
the world was made." The lives of the Italian ar- 
tists, who estabhshed a despotism of genius amidst 
the dukes and kings and mobs of their stormy epoch, 
prove how loyal men in all times are to a finer brain, 
a finer method, than their own. If a man can cut 
such a head on his stone gate-post as shall draw and 
keep a crowd about it all da}', by its beauty, good 
nature, and inscrutable meaning ; — if a man can 
build a plain cottage with such symmetry, as to make 
all the fine palaces look cheap and vulgar ; can take 
such advantage of Nature, that all her powers serve 
him ; making use of geometry, instead of expense ; 
tapping a mountain for his water-jet; causing the 
sun and moon to seem only the decorations of his 
estate ; this is still the legitimate dominion of beauty. 

The radiance of the human form, though sometimes 
astonishing, is only a burst of beauty for a few years 
or a few months, at the perfection of youth, and in 
most, rapidly declines. But we remain lovers of it, 
only transferring our interest to interior excellence. 
And it is not only admirable in singular and salient 
talents, but also in the world of manners. 

But the sovereign attribute remains to be noted. 
Things are pretty, graceful, rich^ elegant, handsome, 
but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beauti- 
ful. This is the reason why beauty is still escaping 
out of all analysis. It is not yet possessed, it cannot 
be handled. Proclus says, " it swims on the light of 



242 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

forms." It is properly not in the form, but in the 
mind. It instantly deserts possession, and flies to 
an object in the horizon. If I could put my hand on 
the north star, would it be as beautiful ? The sea is 
lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes 
all the near water. For the imagination and senses 
cannot be gratified at the same time. Wordsworth 
rightly speaks of " a light that never was on sea or 
land," meaning, that it was supplied by the observer, 
and the Welsh bard warns his countrywomen, that 

— " half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die." 

The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful, is 
a certain cosmical quality, or, a power to suggest rela- 
tion to the whole world, and so lift the object out of 
a pitiful individuality. Every natural feature, — sea, 
sky, rainbow, flowers, musical tone, — has in it some- 
what which is not private, but universal, speaks of that 
central benefit which is the soul of Nature, and thereby 
is beautiful. And, in chosen men and women, I find 
somewhat in form, speech, and manners, which is not 
of their person and family, but of a humane, catholic, 
and spiritual character, and we love them as the sky. 
They have a largeness of suggestion, and their face 
and manners carry a certain grandeur, like time and 
justice. 

The feat of the imagination is in showing the 
convertibihty of every thing into every other thing. 
Facts which had never before left their stark common 
sense, suddenly figure as Eleusinian mysteries. . My 
boots and chair and candlestick are fairies in disguise, 
meteors and constellations. All the facts in Nature 



BEAUTY. 243 

are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of 
the eternal language. Every word has a double, 
treble, or centuple use and meaning. What ! has my 
stove and pepper-pot a false bottom ! I cry you 
mercy, good shoe-box ! I did not know you were a 
jewel-case. Chaff and dust begin to sparkle, and are 
clothed about with immortality. And there is a joy 
in perceiving the representative or symbolic character 
of a fact, which no bare fact or event can ever give. 
There are no days in life so memorable as those 
which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. 

The poets are quite right in decking their mis- 
tresses with the spoils of the landscape, flower-gar- 
dens, gems, rainbows, flushes of morning, and stars 
of night, since all beauty points at identity, and what- 
soever thing does not express to me the sea and sky, 
day and night, is somewhat forbidden and wrong. 
Into every beautiful object, there enters somewhat 
immeasurable and divine, and just as much into form 
bounded by outlines, like mountains on the horizon, 
as into tones of music, or depths of space. Polarized 
light showed the secret architecture of bodies ; and 
when the second-sight of the mind is opened, now one 
color or form or gesture, and now another, has a 
pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, 
disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things. 

The laws of this translation we do not know, or 
why one feature or gesture enchants, why one word 
or syllable intoxicates, but the fact is familiar that the 
fine touch of the eye, or a grace of manners, or a 
phrase of poetry, plants wings at our shoulders ; as if 
the Divinity, in his approaches, lifts away mountains 



244 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

of obstruction, and deigns to draw a truer line, which 
the mind knows and owns. This is that haughty 
force of beauty, " vis siiperba fonncE,^'' which the 
poets praise, — under calm and precise outline, the 
immeasurable and divine : Beauty hiding all wisdom 
and power in its calm sky. 

All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I 
find the antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus Anto- 
ninus : and the beauty ever in proportion to the 
depth of thought. Gross and obscure natures, how- 
ever decorated, seem impure shambles ; but character 
gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin 
and gray hairs. An adorer of truth we cannot choose 
but obey, and the woman who has shared with us the 
moral sentiment, — her locks must appear to us sub- 
lime. Thus there is a climbing scale of culture, from 
the first agreeable sensation which a sparkling gem or 
a scarlet stain affords the eye, up through fair outlines 
and details of the landscape, features of the human 
face and form, signs and tokens of thought and 
character in manners, up to the ineffable mysteries of 
the intellect. Wherever we begin, thither our steps 
tend : an ascent from the joy of a horse in his trap- 
pings, up to the perception of Newton, that the globe 
on which we ride is only a larger apple falling from a 
larger tree ; up to the perception of Plato, that globe 
and universe are rude and early expressions of an all- 
dissolving Unity, — the first stair on the scale to the 
temple of the Mind. 



IX. 

ILLUSIONS. 



Flow, flow the waves hated, 
Accursed, adored, 
The waves of mutation : 
No anchorge is. 
Sleep is not, death is not ; 
Who seem to die live. 
House you were born in, 
Friends of your spring-time, 
Old man and young maid. 
Day's toil and its guerdon, 
They are all vanishing, 
Fleeing to fables, 
Cannot be moored. 
See the stars through them. 
Through treacherous marbles. 
Know, the stars yonder 
The stars everlasting, 
Are fugitive also. 
And emulate, vaulted, 
The lambent heat-lightning. 
And fire-fly's flight. 

When thou dost return 
On the wave's circulation. 
Beholding the shimmer. 
The wild dissipation, 
And, out of endeavor 
To change and to flow. 
The gas become solid. 
And phantoms and nothings 
Return to be things. 
And endless imbroglio 
Is law and the world, — 
Then first shalt thou know. 
That in the wild turmoil. 
Horsed on the Proteus, 
Thou ridest to power. 
And to endurance. 



ILLUSIONS. 

Some years ago, in company with an agreeable 
party, I spent a long summer day in exploring the 
Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We traversed, through 
spacious galleries affording a solid masonry founda- 
tion for the town and county overhead, the six or 
eight black miles from the mouth of the cavern to the 
innermost recess which tourists visit, — a niche or 
grotto made of one seamless stalactite, and called, I 
believe, Serena's Bower. I lost the light of one day. 
I saw high domes, and bottomless pits ; heard the 
voice of unseen waterfalls ; paddled three quarters of 
a mile in the deep Echo River, whose waters are 
peopled with the blind fish ; crossed the streams 
" Lethe " and " Styx ; " plied with music and guns the 
echoes in these alarming galleries ; saw every form of 
stalagmite and stalactite in the sculptured and fretted 
chambers, — icicle, orange-flower, acanthus, grapes, 
and snowball. We shot Bengal lights into the vaults 
and groins of the sparry cathedrals, and examined all 
the masterpieces which the four combined engineers, 
water, limestone, gravitation, and time, could make in 
the dark. 

The mysteries and scenery of the cave had the 
s.une dignity that belongs to all natural objects, and 
Wdich shames the fine things to which we foppishly 
compare them. I remarked, especially, the mimetic 
h^bit, with which Nature, on new instruments, hums 
247 



248 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 

her old tunes, making night to mimic day, and chem- 
istry to ape vegetation. But I then took notice, and 
still chiefly remember, that the best thing which the 
cave had to offer was an illusion. On arriving at 
what is called the " Star-Chamber," our lamps were 
taken from us by the guide, and extinguished or put 
aside, and, on looking upwards, I saw or seemed to 
see the night heaven thick with stars glimmering 
more or less brightly over our heads, and even what 
seemed a comet flaming among them. All the party 
were touched with astonishment and pleasure. Our 
musical friends sung with much feeling a pretty song, 
" The stars are in the quiet sky," &c., and I sat down 
on the rocky floor to enjoy the serene picture. Some 
crystal specks in the black ceiling high overhead, 
reflecting the light of a half-hid lamp, yielded this 
magnificent effect. 

I own, I did not like the cave so well for eking out 
its sublimities with this theatrical trick. But I have 
had many experiences like it, before and since ; and 
we must be content to be pleased without too curi- 
ously analyzing the occasions. Our conversation 
with Nature is not just what it seems. The cloud- 
rack, the sunrise and sunset glories, rainbows, and 
northern lights are not quite so spheral as our child- 
hood thought them ; and the part our organization 
plays in them is too large. The senses interfere 
everywhere, and mix their own structure with all 
they report of. Once, we fancied the earth a plane, 
and stationary. In admiring the sunset, we do not 
yet deduct the rounding, coordinating, pictorial pow- 
ers of the eye. 



ILLUSIONS. 249 

The same interference from our organization cre- 
ates the most of our pleasure and pain. Our first 
mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the 
joy which we give to the circumstance. Life is an 
ecstasy. Life is sweet as nitrous oxide ; and the 
fisherman dripping all day over a cold pond, the 
switchman at the railway intersection, the farmer in 
the field, the negro in the rice-swamp, the fop in the 
street, the hunter in the woods, the barrister with 
the jury, the belle at the ball, all ascribe a certain 
pleasure to their employment, which they themselves 
give it. Health and appetite impart the sweetness to 
sugar, bread, and meat. We fancy that our civiliza- 
tion has got on far, but we still come back to our 
primers. 

We live by our imaginations, by our admirations, 
by our sentiments. The child walks amid heaps of 
illusions, which he does not like to have disturbed. 
The boy, how sweet to him is his fancy ! how dear 
the story of barons and battles! What a hero he is, 
whilst he feeds on his heroes ! What a debt is his to 
imaginative books! He has no better friend or influ- 
ence, than Scott, Shakspeare, Plutarch, and Homer. 
The man lives to other objects, but who dare affirm 
that they are more real.? Even the prose of the 
streets is full of refi-actions. In the Hfe of the dreari- 
est alderman, fancy enters into all details, and colors 
them with rosy hue. He imitates the air and actions 
of people whom he admires, and is raised in his own 
eyes. He pays a debt quicker to a rich man than to 
a poor man. He wishes the bow and compliment of 
some leader in the state, or in society ; weighs what 



250 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

he says ; perhaps he never comes nearer to him for 
that, but dies at last better contented for this amuse- 
ment of his eyes and his fancy. 

The world rolls, the din of life is never hushed. 
In London, in Paris, in Boston, in San Francisco, 
the carnival, the masquerade is at its height. No- 
body drops his domino. The unities, the fictions of 
the piece it would be an impertinence to break. The 
chapter of fascinations is very long. Great is paint ; 
nay, God is the painter ; and we rightly accuse the 
critic who destroys too many illusions. Society does 
not love its unmaskers. It was wittily, if somewhat 
bitterly, said by D'Alembert, " qii'uii etai de vapeiir 
etait un etat trh fdcheicx^ parcequ'il nous faisait 
voir les choses coinme elles sonty I find men vic- 
tims of illusion in all parts of life. Children, youths, 
adults, and old men, all are led by one bawble or 
another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, 
or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking, — for the Power has 
many names, — is stronger than the Titans, stronger 
than Apollo. Few have overheard the gods, or sur- 
prised their secret. Life is a succession of lessons 
which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, 
and the key to a riddle is another riddle. There are 
as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. 
We wake from one dream into another dream. The 
toys, to be sure, are various, and are graduated in 
refinement to the quality of the dupe. The intel- 
lectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily 
amused. But everybody is drugged with his own 
frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with 
music and banner and badge. 



ILLUSIONS. 251 

Amid the joyous troop who give in to the charivari, 
comes now and then a sad-eyed boy, whose eyes lack 
the requisite refractions to clothe the show in due 
glory, and who is afflicted with a tendency to trace 
home the glittering miscellany of fruits and flowers to 
one root. Science is a search after identity, and the 
scientific whim is lurking in all corners. At the State 
Fair, a friend of mine complained that all the varieties 
of fancy pears in our orchards seem to have been 
selected by somebody who had a whim for a particu- 
lar kind of pear, and only cultivated such as had that 
perfume ; they were all alike. And I remember the 
quarrel of another youth with the confectioners, that, 
when he racked his wit to choose the best comfits in 
the shops, in all the endless varieties of sweetmeat he 
could only find three flavors, or two. What then? 
Pears and cakes are good for something ; and because 
you, unluckily, have an eye or nose too keen, why 
need you spoil the comfort which the rest of us find 
in them? I knew a humorist, who, in a good deal of 
rattle, had a grain or two of sense. He shocked the 
company by maintaining that the attributes of God 
were two, — power and risibility ; and that it was the 
duty of every pious man to keep up the comedy. And 
I have known gentlemen of great stake in the commu- 
nity, but whose sympathies were cold, — presidents of 
colleges, and governors, and senators, — who held 
themselves bound to sign every temperance pledge, 
and act with Bible societies, and missions, and peace- 
makers, and cry Hist-a-boyl to every good dog. We 
must not carry comity too far, but we all have kind 
impulses in this direction. When the boys come into 



252 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I 
enter into Nature's game, and affect to grant the per- 
mission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they 
will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But 
this tenderness is quite unnecessary ; the enchant- 
ments are laid on very thick. Their young life is 
thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot 
of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday ; yet not 
the less they hung it round with frippery romance, 
like the children of the happiest fortune, and talked 
of " the dear cottage where so many joyful hours had 
flown." Well, this thatching of hovels is the custom 
of the country. Women, more than all, are the ele- 
ment and kingdom of illusion. Being fascinated, 
they fascinate. They see through Claude-Lorraines. 
And how dare any one, if he could, pluck away the 
coulisses^ stage effects, and ceremonies, by which they 
live ? Too pathetic, too pitiable, is the region of af- 
fection, and its atmosphere always liable to mirage. 

We are not very much to blame for our bad 
marriages. We live amid hallucinations ; and this 
especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all 
are tripped up first or last. But the mighty Mother 
who had been so sly with us, as if she felt that she 
owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora- 
box of marriage some deep and serious benefits, and 
some great joys. We find a delight in the beauty 
and happiness of children, that makes the heart too 
big for the body. In the worst-assorted connections 
there is ever some mixture of true marriage. Teague 
and his jade get some just relations of mutual respect, 
kindly observation, and fostering of each other, learn 



ILLUSIONS. 253 

something, and would carry themselves wiselier, if 
they were now to begin. 

'Tis fine for us to point at one or another fine mad- 
man, as if there were any exempts. The scholar in 
his library is none. I, who have all my life heard 
any number of orations and debates, read poems and 
miscellaneous books, conversed with many geniuses, 
am still the victim of any new page ; and, if Marma- 
duke, or Hugh, or Moosehead, or any other, invent a 
new style or mythology, I fancy that the world will 
be all brave and right, if dressed in these colors, 
which I had not thought of. Then at once I will daub 
with this new paint ; but it will not stick. 'Tis like 
the cement which the peddler sells at the door ; he 
makes broken crockery hold with it, but you can never 
buy of him a bit of the cement which will make it 
hold when he is gone. 

Men who make themselves felt in the world avail 
themselves of a certain fate in their constitution, 
which they know how to use. But they never deeply 
interest us, unless they lift a corner of the curtain, or 
betray never so slightly their penetration of what is 
behind it. 'Tis the charm of practical men, that out- 
side of their practicality are a certain poetry and play, 
as if they led the good horse Power by the bridle, and 
preferred to walk, though they can ride so fiercely. 
Bonaparte is intellectual, as well as Caesar; and the 
best soldiers, sea-captains, and railway men have a 
gentleness, when off duty ; a good-natured admission 
that there are illusions, and who shall say that he is 
not their sport? We stigmatize the cast-iron fellows, 
who cannot so detach themselves, as " dragon-rid- 



254 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

den," " thunder-stricken," and fools of fate, with what- 
ever powers endowed. 

Since our tuition is through emblems and indirec- 
tions, 'tis well to know that there is method in it, a 
fixed scale, and rank above rank in the phantasms. 
We begin low with coarse masks, and rise to the most 
subtle and beautiful. The red men told Columbus, 
"they had an herb which took away fatigue ;" but he 
found the illusion of " arriving from the east at the 
Indies" more composing to his lofty spirit than any 
tobacco. Is not our faith in the impenetrability of 
matter more sedative than narcotics? You play with 
jackstraws, balls, bowls, horse and gun, estates and 
politics ; but there are finer games before you. Is 
not time a pretty toy? Life will show you masks 
that are worth all your carnivals. Yonder mountain 
must migrate into your mind. The fine star-dust and 
nebulous blur in Orion, "the portentous year of Mizar 
and Alcor," must come down and be dealt with in 
your household thought. What if you shall come to 
discern that the play and playground of all this pom- 
pous history are radiations from yourself, and that the 
sun borrows his beams? What terrible questions 
we are learning to ask! The former men believed in 
magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swal- 
lowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are com- 
ing on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of 
men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which 
they and their fathers held and were framed upon. 

There are deceptions of the senses, deceptions of 
the passions, and the structural, beneficent illusions 
of sentiment and of the intellect. There is the illu- 



ILLUSIONS. 255 

sion of love, which attributes to the beloved person 
all which that person shares with his or her family, 
sex, age, or condition, nay, with the human mind 
itself. 'Tis these which the lover loves, and Anna 
Matilda gets the credit of them. As if one shut up 
always in a tower, with one window, through which 
the face of heaven and earth could be seen, should 
fancy that all the marvels he beheld belonged to that 
window. There is the illusion of time, which is very 
deep ; who has disposed of it ? or come to the con- 
viction that what seems the succession of thought is 
only the distribution of wholes into causal series? 
The intellect sees that every atom carries the whole 
of Nature; that the mind opens to omnipotence ; that, 
in the endless striving and ascents, the metamorphosis 
is entire, so that the soul doth not know itself in its 
own act, when that act is perfected. There is illusion 
that shall deceive even the elect. There is illusion 
that shall deceive even the performer of the miracle. 
Though he make his body, he denies that he makes 
it. Though the world exist from thought, thought 
is daunted in presence of the world. One after the 
other we accept the mental laws, still resisting those 
which follow, which however must be accepted. But 
all our concessions only compel us to new profusion. 
And what avails it that science has come to treat 
space and time as simply forms of thought, and the 
material world as hypothetical, and withal our pre- 
tension of property and even of self-hood are fading 
with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not 
finalities ; but the incessant flowing and ascension 
reach these also, and each thought which yesterday 



256 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generaliza- 
tion? 

With such volatile elements to work in, 'tis no 
wonder if our estimates are loose and floating. We 
must work and affirm, but we have no guess of the 
value of what we say or do. The cloud is now as 
big as your hand, and now it covers a county. That 
story of Thor, who was set to drain the drinking- 
horn in Asgard, and to wrestle with the old woman, 
and to run with the runner Lok, and presently found 
that he had been drinking up the sea, and wrestling 
with Time, and racing with Thought, describes us 
who are contending, amid these seeming trifles, with 
the supreme energies of Nature. We fancy we have 
fallen into bad company and squalid condition, low 
debts, shoe-bills, broken glass to pay for, pots to buy, 
butcher's meat, sugar, milk, and coal. " Set me some 
great task, ye gods! and I will show my spirit." 
" Not so," says the good Heaven ; " plod and plough, 
vamp your old coats and hats, weave a shoestring; 
great affairs and the best wine by and by." Well, 
'tis all phantasm ; and if we weave a yard of tape in 
all humility, and as well as we can, long hereafter we 
shall see it was no cotton tape at all, but some galaxy 
which we braided, and that the threads were Time 
and Nature. 

We cannot write the order of the variable winds. 
How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods 
and susceptibility? Yet they differ as all and noth- 
ing. Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which 
our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell which coops 
us in : we cannot even see what or where our stars 



ILLUSIONS. 257 

of destiny are. From day to day, the capital facts of 
human hfe are hidden from our eyes. Suddenly the 
mist rolls up, and reveals them, and we think how 
much good time is gone, that might have been saved, 
had any hint of these things been shown. A sudden 
rise in the road shows us the system of mountains, 
and all the summits, which have been just as near us 
all the year, but quite out of mind. But these alter- 
nations are not without their order, and we are parties 
to our various fortune. If life seem a succession of 
dreams, yet poetic justice is done in dreams also. 
The visions of good men are good ; it is the undisci- 
plined will that is whipped with bad thoughts and 
bad fortunes. When we break the laws, we lose our 
hold on the central reality. Like sick men in hospi- 
tals, we change only from bed to bed, from one folly 
to another ; and it cannot signify much what becomes 
of such castaways, — wailing, stupid, comatose crea- 
tures, — lifted from bed to bed, from the nothing of 
life to the nothing of death. 

In this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly for 
stays and foundations. There is none but a strict 
and faithful dealing at home, and a severe barring out 
of all duplicity or illusion there. Whatever games 
are played with us, we must play no games with our- 
selves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty 
and truth. I look upon the simple and childish vir- 
tues of veracity and honesty as the root of all that is 
sublime in character. Speak as you think, be what 
you are, pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer to be 
owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as 
my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dis- 



258 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

sipated, or undermined, to all the eclat in the universe. 
This reality is the foundation of friendship, religion, 
poetry, and art. At the top or at the bottom of all 
illusions, I set the cheat which still leads us to work 
and live for appearances, in spite of our conviction, in 
all sane hours, that it is what we really are that avails 
with friends, with strangers, and with fate or fortune. 

One would think from the talk of men, that riches 
and poverty were a great matter ; and our civilization 
mainly respects it. But the Indians say, that they do 
not think the white man with his brow of care, always 
toiling, afraid of heat and cold, and keeping within 
doors, has any advantage of them. The permanent 
interest of every man is, never to be in a false posi- 
tion, but to have the weight of Nature to back him in 
all that he does. Riches and poverty are a thick or 
thin costume; and our life — the life of all of us — 
identical. For we transcend the circumstance con- 
tinually, and taste the real quality of existence ; as in 
our employments, which only differ in the manipula- 
tions, but express the same laws ; or in our thoughts, 
which wear no silks, and taste no ice-creams. We 
see God face to face every hour, and know the savor 
of Nature. 

The early Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Xe- 
nophanes measured their force on this problem of 
identity. Diogenes of Apollonia said, that unless the 
atoms were made of one stuff, they could never blend 
and act with one another. But the Hindoos, in their 
sacred writings, express the liveliest feeling, both of 
the essential identity, and of that illusion which they 
conceive variety to be. "The notions, '/ ^»/,' and 



ILLUSIONS. 



259 



'• This is minej'' which influence mankind, are but de- 
lusions of the mother of the world. Dispel, O Lord 
of all creatures ! the conceit of knowledge which pro- 
ceeds from ignorance." And the beatitude of man 
they hold to lie in being freed from fascination. 

The intellect is stimulated by the statement of truth 
in a trope, and the will by clothing the laws of life in 
illusions. But the unities of Truth and of Right are 
not broken by the disguise. There need never be 
any confusion in these. In a crowded life of many 
parts and performers, on a stage of nations, or in the 
obscurest hamlet in Maine or California, the same 
elements oifer the same choices to each new comer, 
and, according to his election, he fixes his fortune in 
absolute Nature. It would be hard to put more men- 
tal and moral philosophy than the Persians have 
thrown into a sentence : — 

" Fooled thou must be, though wisest of the wise : 
Then be the fool of virtue, not of vice." 

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. 
All is system and gradation. Every god is there sit- 
ting in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall 
of the firmament : there is he alone with them alone, 
they pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and 
beckoning him up to their thrones. On the instant, 
and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illusions. He 
fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way 
and that, and whose movement and doings he must 
obey: he fancies himself poor, orphaned, insignifi- 
cant. The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now 
furiously commanding this thing to be done, now 



26o CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

that. What is he that he should resist their will, and 
think or act for himself ? Every moment, new changes, 
and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and distract 
him. And when, by and by, for an instant, the air 
clears, and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods 
still sitting around him on their thrones, — they alone 
with him alone. 



JUL 9 190? 




V 



